


Arrow

by LUC1FORM



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Infinity Stones, Parallel Universes, The Blip, The Red Room, Ultron Sentinels, awesome fight scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 23,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LUC1FORM/pseuds/LUC1FORM
Summary: What if Lila Barton wasn't snapped away?Lila's been living in her father's shadow for as long as she can remember, although there's something more than special about being the daughter of Hawkeye. But when her family disintegrates and her father vanishes, she struggles to fend for herself. That is, until one of Ultron's sentinels shows up in her woods.Lila is captured by a re-emerging HYDRA, now merged with the Red Room initiative, and teams up with Pepper Potts to survive in order to accomplish their goal of stopping Ultron's shadowed backup plan set into the future, far past where any of them looked: recreating and mass producing artificial infinity stones.As Lila spins a web of danger around herself, she ties herself close up to enemies, not knowing every step she takes, she finds herself, too.But how far can a butterfly go into a spider's nest before their wings turn to dust and they make a fatal mistake?Or, A PARALLEL TIMELIME STORY WITH A LOT OF FIGHT SCENESDisclaimer: All rights belong to Disney and Marvel Studios.Kudos + comment if you like please!!
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Luciform may or may not be a word. Dictionary.com denies it's existence, but Merriam-Webster has a definition. But we'll get to that later. Still here? Awesome.  
> So this is my first fic, and basically my goal was to finish it before Black Widow came out in an attempt to beat Disney/Marvel to filling in some plot holes. This is not canon, and may leave you with some questions that cannot be answered, but I'll do my best to answer them regardless. So, given that Black Widow is POSTPONED for another couple of months, I have some time. I'll drop a couple chapters every weekend, because they're pretty short and I hate leaving projects unfinished. I'd be absolutely thrilled to see reviews or questions or ships or rants in the comments section because comments are great, just as they say, DON'T BE MEAN AND KEEP IT CLEAN! Cheesy, I know, but do it anyway ;)  
> So. My username, LUC1FORM (the one is basically an I) means something along the lines of 'pertaining to light' or 'luminous' (on the sites that consider it a word, anyway) and I think we can all agree that anything that begins with the suffix 'luci' is a little bit good and a little bit dark (ever heard of Lucifer? And if they fall as Lucifer fell, the flame, the sword? Anyone?) just like everyone. No one's perfect, but don't let that hold you back. That's about as inspirational as I get.  
> So, sit back, enjoy, maybe drop a comment or shout at me to update, and I'll sign off now with my new gimmick:  
> Set fire to the stars,  
> -LUC1FORM
> 
> Disclaimer: All rights belong to Disney and Marvel Studios.

_ Twang. _

Lila released the arrow. It flew straight and landed in the bull’s eye.

“Nice one, Hawkeye,” said her dad, patting her on the back and removing the hand over her eyes. She grinned sheepishly, setting the bow down and turning her attention to her mother’s words.

“Mustard or Mayo?” Laura Barton called from the picnic table she had set up earlier upon urging them to get outside. Like there was anywhere else to go on this property. Lila wouldn’t trade it for anything, though: it was home.

“Why can’t we have ketchup?” shouted Nathaniel. 

The real Hawkeye looked at her. “Mustard is superior.” 

“Mustard,” she agreed.

She headed towards the picnic table, framed perfectly by the woods beyond.

That’s when it all went wrong.

There was nothing. Just a regular breeze. Until little motes of dust began billowing away. Her other brother, Cooper, looked at his hand. A second before, it had been just a hand. But now, the tips of his fingers were turning a charred black. It was like everyone had started  _ crumbling _ . Nate’s eyes went wide. 

“Laura? Laura!” 

She could hear her father’s calls from beyond. Her heart leaped to her throat. She looked down. Her body hadn’t changed at all.

By the time she looked up, her mom and two siblings were gone. Vanished, into the wind. How could people just crumble like that? Become little ashes and float away?

Panic overcame her. “Dad?” she asked, but he had faded out of view. Had he disintegrated too? What was happening? What was it that she had heard her dad talking about with mom before he had left earlier? Something about someone named Thanos and some stones…

Fear overtook her and she couldn’t think straight. Her blurred mind couldn't process anything anymore. Set in default, she barreled towards the woods, her safe place where she could think, where she often went alone to practice archery. 

She ran until her legs burned, so deep and far back into the forest that she could hardly recognize the woods from what she knew, the soft, sunny clearings she enjoyed. Now the brambles were thick and the tree cover heavy. She was covered in scratches by the time she arrived in the clearing, breathing hard. 

Her mind had finally caught up to her body now. They were gone. She didn’t know how, or where, or for how long, but they were gone. Perfectly healthy people, just vanished.

Vanished.

She let out an ear-piercing scream. The birds nearby took flight, only to disappear midair, bright wings turning the color of charcoal and falling into pieces and being carried away on the wind. 

Sinking to her knees, letting the remaining ash float down into her hair.

Then she let the downpour of tears come and wash away her pain.


	2. Five Years Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know this chapter is going to be pretty random, but deal with it. It's like that song in a really good musical that no one likes (Something Bad, Wicked? You're A D'Ysquith, Gentleman's Guide?) but hey, it's plot setup.  
> Really short plot setup.

_ Twang. Twang. Twang. Twang. _

Lila released the arrows in quick succession. They flew straight and landed in the bull’s eye.

They always did.

Not having enough room in the inch-by-inch center of the target, one bounced off and landed in the bushes a few yards behind her. Cursing softly, Lila went to retrieve the arrows on the target.

She had been living alone in the woods for five years now. She always tried to avoid thinking of that fateful day when her life had changed forever. Someday, she wondered where her dad might be, but she didn’t linger on the thought. He was probably off saving the world with the rest of the Avengers, no idea that she hadn’t disintegrated like the rest of the family. Archery always helped keep her mind off things, especially since her bow and arrows was the same one from target practice the day her family disappeared, so they were her one attachment that tied her to her dad.

She opened her bag and pulled out a sandwich. She hadn’t gone back to her house much; it brought back too many painful memories, though she had to go back for clothes, showers, and food occasionally. Being in the woods, where she had set up their tent, made her feel wilder.

She took a bite of the sandwich, going to search for the arrow. She shoved the rest of the sandwich back into the bag and pulled aside the leaves of a particularly prickly bush. She located two of them, but lost track of the third, which should have been easy to find, given that she had been firing out of the woods rather than further in for this exact reason.

She walked forwards, out of the underbrush, until she could see her house in the far-off distance. And there was her arrow....hovering in the air, like there was some invisible barrier it was caught between.

_ What in the- _

A small crunching sound brought her to attention. She nocked an arrow in her bow lightning-fast and whipped around, her short, dirty hair flying into her face. 

Something cold pressed into her back, sending a shiver up her spine. She’d never encountered anything more harmful than squirrels in the woods. Spinning around, she saw the unreal.

It was once silver, now rusty. The mask was torn, and the body too, in several places, revealing the slight circuitry underneath. But it was unmistakable to her, being Hawkeye’s daughter. 

It was one of Ultron’s clones.

“But...you don’t exist,” she whispered.

“I do.” The robotic voice was smoother than she had expected.

She blinked, hoping it was her often overactive imagination while dread pooled in her stomach. “But…” She looked desperately for evidence, for something real to attach her mind to. “Vision. He said the last one is dead. He did it. The stone in his head.” Stone. Why were so many things tied around stones? Were the two discussions she’d overheard even pertaining to the same thing? And more importantly, was she hallucinating? No, the cold touch of metal sliding against her back had been real.

“I was his Steel Corps,” it said. The face tilted, crude features exposed in the afternoon fall light. “His sentinels.  _ Him _ .”

“His...what? But Ultron is gone. He’s been gone for years.” Her father had said so himself, hadn’t he? Yes, he’d come home after that, and went straight to his family, like he’d realized they somehow matter a lot more than he’d thought. 

When it laughed, it was like the sound of metal scraping metal, one she had heard when Morgan Stark showed Lila her first invention when she’d last visited. A motorized toy car. It worked surprisingly well, considering it had been made by a three-year-old. She wondered how old Morgan would be now. Five?

“He has never been gone. He sent his Legion, his backups, with his plan B. If he didn’t make it to see the end of humanity. We were sent to wander the world. It was our bodies he shaped first, our control most important. It was one of the Legion your Vision met, programmed with a default speech if met by any of the Avengers. There are probably very few left now, very few. Metal does not last forever, see. But we are not metal. We are everywhere. We are everything. We are inevitable.”

How strange it would be if she had known that, just a few months later, that exact final phrase would end it all.

“What is plan B?” she asked, her voice cracking on the last note. She was afraid. Without guidance, she was just a girl lost in the woods by herself. She clutched her bow, fingers turning white around the grip. She’d dropped her arrows.

“If all else fails, bring back H.Y.D.R.A.”   
  


  
  



	3. Hail HYDRA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't leave you there, could I? Last time I checked, 24 is divisible by 3, so I guess I'll drop 3 chapters per weekend. Anyway, I'll give you this ending instead.

H.Y.D.R.A.

The word rang over and over in her head. It meant something, she was sure of it. She had heard her dad talking about it. Hadn’t Black Widow, or, as she often thought of her in her head, Aunt Nat, mentioned it to her father? Whispers at night when they thought she had been asleep. Yes, hadn’t it been that night when she drew a butterfly for Aunt Nat? The Avengers had departed the following morning, and the next day, mom had changed Nate’s middle name from her maiden name to Pietro. But where she would find out more about H.Y.D.R.A., that was beyond her. Except….

Hadn’t what she heard been about released files? Hadn’t Aunt Nat uploaded the S.H.I.E.L.D files to the internet? Hadn’t it made national news?

Hoisting her bow and slinging her quiver of arrows around her shoulder and forgetting everything else except the _thing_ she had just run from, she started jogging towards the direction of the house. The robot, or whatever it was, had just shut down and fallen to the moss floor after delivering it’s message. 

She remembered, luckily, that she carried the keys with her, and when the ‘blipped’ (as it was now called) people disappeared, their items had been moved to storage. Her dad had locked the house, though, and because it had been installed with state-of-the-art Stark security tech, no one had been able to enter without breaking in, and that would land them in a quite undesirable mess with both S.H.I.E.L.D and Mr. Stark (though she was quite sure he’d honestly be more upset that his new technology that he had no copies of yet would have been destroyed).

She stepped into her room where her old computer lay on the desk, gathering dust. She opened the lid, typed _Hawkgirl118_ in, and pressed enter. She first tried searching up H.Y.D.R.A., but all she found was a ton of fake news dated at least six years back. 

_S.H.I.E.LD,_ she typed in. Sadly enough, the only results were of Cap’s vibranium shield. (She’d always felt weird calling him Cap, because he was both a faraway hero and a family friend to her. She had always preferred calling him Mr. Rogers).

 _Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division_ yielded the same results. Defeated, she pushed her chair back and slammed the computer’s lid shut.

She had been so sure those files had been publicized. The only reason for not finding them would be if they were re-hidden somewhere in the deep web. 

If someone didn’t want those files found.

She knew the files had exposed H.Y.D.R.A. Then she remembered the words of the metal robot/A.I.

Hadn’t it said that it’s sole purpose now was to re-create H.Y.D.R.A.? And hadn’t Ultron originally been a program? That would mean his Steel Corps would have complete access to anywhere on the internet. Yes, that brought back to her memory a fact buried deep inside her head: didn’t Mr. Stark once tell her that he hacked the Pentagon in high school for a dare?

She knew Pepper wouldn’t be much help with that...but what about Morgan?

 _She’s only five, though,_ said the sensible part of her brain. _Don’t be an idiot._

 _Don’t be an idiot!_ Screamed the other part of her. _Morgan is your only chance!_

She gave in to her more aggressive thoughts. If Tony could hack the government in high school, surely his daughter could get into the deep web in preschool.

She grabbed her computer, shoved it in her bag, and, walking through the living room, paused for a moment. Hesitating for only a second, she grabbed the smallest family photo off the mantelpiece and added that to her bag too.

It was time to pay the Stark household a visit.

When Lila rang the Stark mansion doorbell, she suddenly remembered something, or, rather, remembered wanting to remember something. Instead, her head drifted towards the building. Well, it wasn’t really a mansion, more like a cabin, but it was still more than double the size of her house.

Pepper opened the door. Her mouth dropped open.

“Lila? But Clint said you were...you were...”

Ah. She had forgotten that little hitch. 

“Dead? Gone? Uh, no, actually.” So. Her father was still out there somewhere. That was good.

“Come inside. You’d better tell me everything.”

Lila stepped inside. As soon as she was through the doorway, a little blur barreled towards her.

“Morgan!” Lila reached down and pried Tony Stark’s daughter off herself. “Wow, you’re so tall now.”

“So are you!” she squeaked, bouncing up and down.

“Morgan,” said Pepper sternly. “Time to get off.” 

She led the way into the living room.

“Can I stay?” asked Morgan eagerly.

“Not now, Mor,” replied Pepper. “Five minutes.”

“Okay,” she said obediently, bouncing up the stairs.

“So. Tell me everything.”

Lila explained how her family had disappeared, how she had fled to the woods, surviving alone for almost five years, how she had discovered the secret of Ultron’s Steel Corps, and the backup plan to bring their downfall if all else fails.

At the end of it, Pepper sat silent for a minute.

“That’s a lot. I-”

“Do you know anything about H.Y.D.R.A.?”

Pepper quieted for a minute. Finally, she said, “Yes.”

“Can-”

“Look. I know you’d be eager to learn this, bet maybe it was buried for a reason.”

“I know the reason!” she said aggressively. “They want to restart H.Y.D.R.A.!”

Pepper sighed. “I know there’s no way I can stop you from getting deeper into this, but if I could help with anything- _anything_...let me know. I just want to protect you from doing anything rash or reckless that could get you killed...basically anything Tony would do.”

Lila sank back into her chair. “Ok. Thank you. I just...do you mind if I see Morgan for a few minutes?”

“Of course. She’s in her room.”

Lila headed upstairs and knocked on a door labeled  _ Morgan.  _

She tentatively opened the door. Morgan was fastening two pieces of plastic together. Her room was littered with inventions. The walls had posters on them, some even Iron Man ones, and the table in the far corner was piled high with scrap cardboard, metal, plastic, screws, washers, and glue. Everything spoke ‘Tony Stark’s daughter’, and she couldn’t resist smiling.

“Hi, Morgan,” she said.

“Hello!” she chirped.

“What are you working on?”

“A computer.”

“Cool.”

Lila sat down and opened her computer. “Do you want to help me with something?”

“Ok. What is it?” Morgan asked, setting down her half-built computer.

“I need your help finding a super-secret file. It is very important.”

“Ok, I guess,” said Morgan.

“I need your help to save the world.”

“I am sold.”

Lila added a browser. “So. Aunt Nat, a few years ago, put some stuff on the internet about the Avengers’s history that we need to find. I think it’s somewhere in the deep web.”

“About daddy?” asked Morgan, suddenly more interested. Lila paused. “Yes. About your daddy.”

“So. Where do we start?”

Morgan was much more educated than she had expected. She went into browsers, found tabs or labels in the wrong place, entered passwords that they guessed together, and picked out difficult codes. 

“Almost got it,” said Morgan.

She paused, looking at a circle code that at 10 by 10 rows of either punched in or punched out dots. Lila got this one first.

“See? The rows with an even number of white punched out dots have two dark ones at the end, but there are four incorrect ones in the page. The password will be the row numbers that-”

“Don’t explain now! There’s a timer!” shouted Morgan. Lila looked to the corner.

3.765

That was definitely seconds.

4,5,8,10, she typed in.

Access Granted.

Morgan and Lila high-fived. “Good work!”

In the search bar, she entered one word.  _ H.Y.D.R.A.. _

Nothing.

“Maybe it has a code name?” suggested Morgan.

That was one smart five-year-old.

_ Steel Corps. _

Score.

Instead of the Iron Man suit results she got on Google, this provided the results she’d expected. Now here was what she was looking for.

_H.Y.D.R.A. is a terrorist-criminal-paramilitary cult bent on world domination. It was founded in ancient times, formerly centered around the worship of Hive, a powerful_ _inhuman that was exiled to the planet_ _Maveth._

 _Ever since his banishment, the cult had been determined to bring him back to commence a planetary takeover. Over the centuries, the cult evolved, taking many forms, with its most recent incarnation coming into existence shortly after the rise of Nazism under the leadership of_ _Johann Schimdt as the scientific branch of the Nazi_ _Schutzstaffel. During this time, the cult took on the name H.Y.D.R.A.. During WWII, they changed focus to world-domination, leaving behind whatever their original intentions may have been._

 _After its defeat by Captain America, H.Y.D.R.A. was secretly rebuilt inside_ _S.H.I.E.L.D by Schmidt's top scientist, who died but who’d mind was carefully preserved digitally._ _Their focus changed to overthrowing governments, making the path to world domination smoother. By the end of the 20th century, operatives of H.Y.D.R.A. had managed to spread outside of S.H.I.E.L.D., infiltrating many important organizations and locating secret bases worldwide._

_ When its existence became publicly known, H.Y.D.R.A. commenced war against S.H.I.E.L.D, resulting in the creation of two genetically modified twins, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. Despite many deaths, H.Y.D.R.A. continued to fight on until the Avengers took control and proceeded to destroy every last H.Y.D.R.A. base. _

_ "Tomorrow, H.Y.D.R.A. will stand master of the world. Borne to victory on the wings of the Valkyrie. Our enemies' weapons will be powerless against us. If they shoot down one plane, hundreds more will rain fire upon them! If they cut off one head, two more shall take its place.  _

_ “Hail H.Y.D.R.A.!" _

Quote of Johann Schmidt, 1940

  
  
  


She blinked. Wow. H.Y.D.R.A. was even crazier than she had ever imagined.

“So! Did you find it? What did my daddy do?”

“Yes. I found everything I needed.” she replied, distracted. “Your dad was very brave.”

H.Y.D.R.A. had been the hidden core of the earth, the seemingly perfect apple one side, rotting on the back.

It had said that H.Y.D.R.A. had existed for over seventy years, hidden, rotting both S.H.I.E.L.D and the government from the inside. But how could Ultron possibly hope to control an insane, somewhat sociopathic cult?

He must have promised them something they very dearly wanted….after all, being technology, he knew and saw everything.

It must have been something worth dying for.

There was a knock at the door. Pepper opened it as Lila hastily shoved her computer back into her bag.

“Everything good? You two have been up here for a while.”

“Look what I made!” said Morgan excitedly, shoving the now finished computer towards Pepper. Lila swore it had been incomplete ten minutes ago.

“That’s great.” she laughed. “You’re always making something with your hands. As long as you are not hacking anything…”

To her, Pepper asked, “Everything good?”

“Yep,” she replied, lying through her teeth.

“We’ll be here anytime you need us. You are welcome to stop by anytime you like.”

“Thanks for everything, she replied, walking towards the door.

She tried to ignore it, but now it was lodged in her brain: one thought, one quote festering and growing larger.

_ Hail H.Y.D.R.A. _


	4. Kidnapped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I totally forgot to copy and paste in half of chapter three, so please go back and read that before continuing on to this. Oh, and I guess I lied, because I am going to post three more chapters midweek. Well.

When Lila returned to her house, she knew something was wrong.

Drawers were open, items were strewn about the floor, and the pictures were lopsided. But her bow and arrows were still there. That was good.

She picked them up. The house was eerily quiet. How had someone gotten into the house so easily? No windows were smashed or anything.

Her thumping heart seemed a lot louder than it usually did.

_ Come on, Lila. Put on your best poker face. Be like Cassie.  _

Cassie, though four years younger, was hardly alarmed by anything. She wondered if Cassie had anyone left. Ant Man, her father, had gone missing, but surely her mother or stepfather would still be around.

She nocked an arrow into her bowstring. This is why it was so handy to have your armguard on at all times. You never know when you might need it. If her mother had been here, she probably would have killed Lila for bringing weapons into the house.

_ But she  _ isn’t  _ here,  _ she thought.  _ You’re on your own now. _

Then a thought struck her. Could this be the work of Ultron’s Steel Corps? Or maybe even H.Y.D.R.A.?

_ Don’t be stupid. That thing in the woods said it was  _ going  _ to bring back H.Y.D.R.A., remember? _

The other voice argued a point that made her certain of her hunch, and her blood felt like it was morphing into ice.

_ But he would have had seven years, wouldn’t he? And H.Y.D.R.A. was practically untraceable. No one knew they existed after all those years until they revealed themselves. _

There was no sound when it happened.

All she saw was the black of a bag thrown over her head, and felt a sharp sting as a needle injected into her skin. Spots started fading in and out, lights that weren't real blossomed only to rupture silently in a burst of color. They had sedated her.  _ H.Y.D.R.A.  _ had sedated her.

Her last clear thought was  _ so this is what H.Y.D.R.A. came for.  _

_ They came for me. _

  
  
  


She woke up, blazing and on fire. When she opened her eyes, it felt like a wave had washed over her, trying to drown her, and she was desperately kicking, trying to keep her head above the surface.

The only thing that she assimilated before blacking out again was a blood-red room.

The wave was pulling back this time. Now it was like a current, slow, but sure. This time she perceived the row of weapons against the crimson walls. She struggled against the current once more, but it only pulled her farther in.

Finally, the third time, she fully awoke. The sedatives had worn off. Ah, the red room. And the weapons. Being the only things her muddled mind had been able to identify, they felt like her old friends. 

Instinctively, she reached for her bow, but found it wasn’t there. She surveyed her surroundings. She was in a black-barred cell, her ankles chained to the hard stone floor. She attempted to stand up, but she was yanked back down to the ground by the chains. She wasn’t able to gather much more than she already had: the rack of exotic, gleaming weapons and the red, red room. She sat down again, waiting for something she wasn’t sure would come. H.Y.D.R.A.  _ had  _ been formed, but hopefully weaker than before, as it had taken all the Avengers’ combined efforts to destroy each and every hidden base. 

A pair of silent feet approached, which was frankly downright incredible because the shoes she saw were black, high-heeled stilettos against the stone floor.  _ Scorpion heels,  _ thought Lila, pulling the information from a magazine cover she’d seen somewhere.

A woman’s face peered down at her, her lips just as crimson as the room around them.

“Now, who do we have here? Hawkeye’s daughter, I see.’   
Lila just gulped and scooted as far back as her chained ankles would allow her. Mustering whatever bravery she had, she asked “Where am I?”

And those crimson lips parted in a bloodthirsty smile.

“Let’s start with a recreation of a place in, say, Russia.”

  
  


The Red Room. She was sure of it.

Aunt Nat never spoke of it, she knew that. But once she had snuck into the room Bruce and Natasha were sharing and she saw it. It was after Scarlet Witch had completely thrown them off, giving them nightmares in their heads, showed them the things they most dearly wanted and snatched them right away. She had seen a page filled with three words repeated over and over again in Nat’s handwriting in red, very red ink.

The Red Room.

She had watched her taking that page outside, pin it to a tree, and shoot it.

Blasting all those memories away until they were only ashes.

Dying embers.

Ah, if it were that easy.

  
  


The next morning, that bone-white-crimson-lipped lady came to her cell.

Lila instinctively moved back.

“This is not a prison, you know,” she said.

Lila had her doubts.

“This is a school. A practiced place of learning how to dance with death.”

She opened the door and ever so softly ran her fingers against Lila’s cheek. She flinched, but unable to move away.

“And my sources have told me you would be a more than exceptional addition.”

She pulled away and tugged a key free from her pocket. 

“Freedom for training?”

“You’re H.Y.D.R.A..”

“We are everything.”

Those same bone-chilling words from the woods.

“I-I won’t!” the words escaped her mouth like a plum of fire, too hot and fast to prevent. She didn’t want this. She missed the sanctuary of the Stark home. But she could be brave, too, like her father.

“Of course, there are other ways of making you. If you don’t come the first time. Shall we have a taster?”

Before Lila could say anything, or move, the woman whipped out a knife and made a shallow cut on the inside of her wrist.

“That was laced with poison. You have about-” she checked her glistening silver watch that seemed to be about the only thing that she wore that wasn’t black or red.

“-two minutes.”

Lila could tell. She was feeling very dizzy, and the sparks flew to her eyes once more. She was sure that the woman had targeted an artery, to make sure the poison reached her bloodstream.

“So. What will it be? Freedom...and the antidote? Or death? That would be such a waste of skill and talent. I know you have it in you.”

One minute.

There never was a choice.

They took her down a hallway, also red. What was with them and red? Maybe to mask old bloodstains. 

Yes, red. Red swam under her eyelids, through her veins, swirling through her head. It coiled around her and warped; it was obscuring her vision and deadening her limbs. There were footsteps nearby, but that seemed muffled.

“You there! Give me the antidote!” It sounded like a voice from the surface when she was miles below the waves.

“You idiot! I told you I needed it now! She’ll die, and we can’t have that.”

Was it just her, or did the voice sound sweet? Like honey...warm and gold, but sticky, drowning her.

No. The honey turned red, blocking her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t—

She felt something like silver flowing down her throat. The sticky substance retreated. Was it all not real? What had happened? 

The red flowed from her eyes, removing itself entirely from her body. Her vision returned and she took a large gulp of the cold air, relieved. But the red. The red would always be there. It just hopefully wouldn't drown her again.

“There,” said the lady. She had almost forgotten about her. At least she knew  _ this  _ was real. 

She led the way to another room, red, but with a black door. She opened it, and the contents inside were a surprise to Lila. 

There was a row of girls, hair all styled the same way, all wearing matching black outfits with black tulle tutus. They, in unison, kicked back, rising so gracefully Lila thought she might have been poisoned again.

“Surprising, isn’t it?” said the woman. “But of course, the reason is the same. One must be graceful and precise when dancing with death, especially those who dance closer to it than most.”

Lila just stared, mesmerized. They lifted again, pinning themselves against the barre, and thrust away, catching themselves by the tiniest hair. She saw what the woman meant: This wasn’t just close to dancing with death, they walked on the fine tightrope of life, and never once let themselves fall.

“Soon you will be one of them,” she whispered into Lila’s ear. “But first, you need to know the right movements. In ballet, you can see each swing of a sword, every twist to avoid an arrow or spear. Grace is the most rudimentary skill used to fight, but how does one fight if they cannot hold a sword? Soon, you will be there, but not yet. Let us first bond with the strength of metal, and then you, like them, can be one swift with the wind.”

  
  



	5. The Red Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you know, this is by no means a canon Red Room. I even put it in a different location with different purposes because as of right now we no basically nothing about it. This one's going to be quick, so just hang on.

The next day, the poison woman brought her back to the room she was initially held in. The weapons room. 

“Take your pick. Start basic.”

Lila reached up for the bow, but the woman grabbed her arm and twisted her around. “Not the bow.”

Instead, she choses a lightweight sword with a comfortable hilt that sort of melded with the shape of her hands. It was like it was meant to be hers. Maybe it was—they could have done anything while she was drugged.

“Firstly, your grip is wrong,” she said, frowning. “Like this.”

Lila twisted her hands awkwardly, attempting to imitate the natural grip that the woman had. She sighed and adjusted Lila’s hands. She flinched, remembering how easy it was for her to slice her cleanly with the poisoned blade. The position was very different from her bow hold. This is unnatural for her.

“Your stance.” 

Lila tried to imitate the well-practiced pose of the woman. This was easier; to use a bow and make a kill swiftly you had to know that one position is simply not enough.

“Better. The basic swing goes like this.” the woman sliced through the air, fast, towards Lila’s head.   
But Lila was faster.

She ducked the blow and reached out with her sword, trying to block whatever little edge she could. The sound of metal hitting metal rang through the room, rattling her focus and allowing the woman to whip out a dagger she had never noticed and pin her to the wall, dagger to the throat.

“You’re fast. That’s good. If you don’t have good reflexes, you will die just like that.” she snapped her fingers, as if to make the death even quicker.

She removed the dagger from Lila’s throat, and she could finally breathe. Lila hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. She registered an accent she hadn’t noticed before, but then again, she had also been sedated. And poisoned. And chained to the floor.

“I am not here to kill you. I am here to train you. But remember, one toe out of line and a knife will be buried in your back, much faster than even you. And, as I have already said, that would be a waste of skills.” 

They sparred for another hour, Lila moving faster than she had imagined possible and learning more than she ever had in school. By the time the woman declared practice over, she had even managed to make a shallow cut on the woman’s arm.

“You are good. But the grace you learn will be much beyond this. The harmony between the blade, the mind, and the body is the only thing that matters now.”

Lila turned to leave, but hesitated.

“What can I call you?”

And she watched that vicious smile return.

“Crimson. I am the Crimson Death.”


	6. Dancing With Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may be confusing, but I will break down some of the seemingly random stuff in the future posts. Enjoy!

The days after, she trained for hours on end with Crimson, moving on from swords to knives.

“So why do you train with me? I mean, you’re kinda high-ranking; it’s not hard to tell.”

Crimson frowned, flicking her knife absentmindedly. “It’s not safe, letting anyone else train you. They would run you through with a knife if they got the chance. They do not know you like I do; they have not explored your mind like I have.”

“They...what?”

“Unregistered Stark technology. It allows one to view a mind inside out. We call it The Blade. For instance, I know you have been living in a different dimension for almost five years now.”

“I...what? How old am I? Where?”

She smiled coldly.

“The answers to that I do not know, and I am not sure if anyone could ever know. The universe is much more complex than what our own miniscule brains can comprehend.”

A cold touch ran down her back. They knew everything…including her trip to the Stark mansion and retrieving lost H.Y.D.R.A. files. 

“Why  _ The Blade _ ?” 

“Like a blade through the gut, the person stands no chance. There is nothing you can hide about a blade, and nothing we can’t find in your mind.”

“Dang.” Lila blurted without thinking.  _ Afraid,  _ she told herself.  _ Remember to be afraid.  _ And though it should have come naturally, the fear didn’t strike her again.

“That sums it up pretty accurately.”

Lila tossed a knife into the wooden panel on the wall. The knife stayed for a second before bouncing off.

“Not like that. Harder.”

Crimson flicked her wrist hard, and a knife whizzed close to her ear, firmly lodging itself in the panel.

“Like that.”

Lila snatched up another one and threw it with greater force. This time, it stuck.

“Good. Keep that angle. You are almost ready.”

“Ready for what?” she asked, though she already knew.

“Ready to dance with death.”

  
  
  


The door swung open as Crimson pushed it inwards. The girls, silent and dressed in black, were in their line, silent as always. She noticed in the corner of the room a full-length mirror stood tall, leering at them.

“Straight, ladies,” said Crimson. The girls in their ballet outfits stayed silent and made no change. They could not be any straighter. They were clearly the best of the best.

“Another joins your number. You will treat her how you treat each other.”

No reactions. 

Without warning, Crimson whipped out her knife and sliced Lila’s hair a little below her shoulders, making it as short as on the day her family had vanished.

“Hey!”

Lila turned, fast and kneed her as hard as she could in the stomach. Crimson only flinched for a second. Before she could pull out her knife from its sheath, her arm was grabbed and twisted back. She wriggled out of the deathly tight grip.

“What was that for?”

“No apologies. But you have to look like them.”

She pulled out a can of dye and sprayed Lila’s hair red. She looked in the mirror. It was her, all right, but different: her cheeks had hollowed out, she’d lost color, she was thinner, and, of course, the recent change to her hair. She realized she hadn’t looked in a mirror for weeks. 

“Change.” Crimson tossed her one of the identical outfits.

“What?”

“Change.” she repeated nonchalantly.

“Not in front of everyone!” 

“We are all the same gender. Now,  _ change. _ ”

Shoving herself in the darkest corner possible, Lila zipped up the back of the black outfit. She felt utterly out of place. Firstly, she hated skirts. Secondly, this outfit was like infinite space. She was sure that just by zipping it up she had brushed her hand over three hidden pockets, maybe more.

Oh well, it would be good for storing knives. 

She left the holster off, considering she hadn’t been supplied with a gun.

“Put that on. You’ll need it.”

She jumped a little, not expecting Crimson to come up behind her. But of course, she  _ had  _ said that she knew everything.

She fastened the holster to the belf hidden by the lightweight chiffon and tulle, walking to stand at the end of the line. 

None of the other girls moved.

Strangely enough, it was this that most unnerved her. This wasn’t natural. And then little nudges her mind had been giving her for the past couple hours slid together. 

They’d been mind wiped.

Hadn’t that happened to Captain America’s best friend? Only trained to remember how to hunt and kill? It was this notion and their blank eyes that convinced her.

“Start.”

It was a command, and one that all the girls followed. Lila just stood there, dumbly, watching them twist in a synchrony beyond comprehension.

“How do I…”

“You’ll learn to follow.”

“That doesn’t help.”

She sighed, walking over to her. In perfect timing, she moved Lila’s arms and legs in harmony with the others, guiding them.

“You try.”

After that, she just  _ knew,  _ like she was born with such precision. She could do things that she couldn’t do before, afire with a passion made of steel, emotionless, like she was born knowing how to do this. Especially when they leaped and did the splits. Like, there was no way she could have done that before.

_ What am I doing? _

_ No. What have they done to me? _

It was then she noticed the targets hung on the wall. Crimson looked at her and handed her the pistol she had been carrying. 

“You’ll know when.”

And she did, like the movement was built into her. They all twisted, leaped into the air, lifting the gun in time with the other assassins in training and fired thrice in a row at the target. In midair.

Now, this was something she could do without H.Y.D.R.A.’s edits. Her aim was immaculate from years of holding a bow.

“Stop.”

Crimson went down the row, observing their targets, seeing their scores. All of them had at least two bullseye’s.

But Lila was the only one with three dead shots stacked on top of each other.

“Step back.”

They walked back to the back of the room. 

“Both.”

All of them pulled out their twin guns. Lila looked to Crimson who gave her the other one. A little connection formed between the girl and the woman in that moment: hesitant trust, the kind that could be snatched back at any moment, the one built of fear and lies and desperation.

“Fire.”

Holding two pistols at once was much harder, and the knockback doubly strong enough that she staggered back a few steps. She was surprised she could even stay standing; old Lila would have been thrown down with that much of a knockback.

But then again, old Lila had never held a gun,

And she wasn’t old Lila anymore, either. She had been... _ changed. _

Old Lila was dead.


	7. Carmine and Scarlet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those 30 people who have read this, thank you! I know it seems a little disconnected, but if any of you are checking for updates, I'll keep adding and wait for the story to tie itself together.

_ Bang. Bang. Bang. _

Three consecutive shots rang through the room. Lila gripped the guns tightly and firmly. The knockback barely even bothered her anymore. Like archery, target practice helped her think. It was only just a little harder.

That thought about H.Y.D.R.A. that had been nagging her for almost a week now ever since she had left the Stark’s house had grown, evolved. The one question had turned into many. Until she could not hold the thought back from taking control.

_ What had they done to her? _

It followed her around, and how she wished she could blast it to pieces just like Aunt Nat had done that day in her backyard. 

The only way to get rid of it now was to find the answer.

During the training, she now could step silently, guns up in seconds. She had even started a little bit of martial arts, which she wasn’t particularly good at, and her admiration for Nat had just skyrocketed.

She knew now the difference between the seemingly hundreds of black doors, and the violently red hallways were imprinted into her mind. She knew where Crimson’s office was, knew that the Red Room filed and kept track of everyone’s past they had seen in The Blade, assuming each and every initiate had been run through, and knew that’s where she would find her records.

She just hoped her martial arts would be enough.

It was going to be today, because Crimson was out. The only danger was just about everyone else. And she didn’t know what the other girls would do. They were unreadable. She would know once she saw their files, at least. She also recognized the truth to be both wonderful and terrible, and knew, as all truths were, that this should be treated with great caution.

Her quarters were with the other girls. Luckily, she had no need to go back, because she had soon figured out that the black, body-tight suit’s skirt was detachable, and she had practically torn it off the second found out.

It was time.

She shoved the barrels of her twin pistols back into their holsters, pulled back her hair into a messy knot, and silently opened the door. 

The hallway was deserted, as usual. She swept past the ballet room, the armory, and the lower-ranking H.Y.D.R.A. officer’s doors. The far one at the dead end was Crimson’s office, which was both good and bad-bad being she had a higher chance of being cornered. 

The door was locked, as she had expected. She snatched a knife out of her boot and shoved it in the lock, twisting it for a good minute. The blade got stuck and she tugged it free. The metal had warped on the end. Swearing violently under her breath, she shoved it back. How was that possible? How would Crimson lock her door? It couldn’t be face recognition; that was too easy.

She examined the lock closer. There was a little tube in the back, like something was supposed to drip in. Blood was too obvious, and there was no way someone as uptight as Crimson would prick herself every time she wanted to access the room. But there  _ was  _ something Crimson liked to carry around a little too much.

Something like poison.

And there was only one place she would find that.

Bracing herself, she sliced into her arm with the knife. Blood bubbled upwards, matching the color of the walls. She just hoped her bloodstream had retained some of that poison. The only problem was that it would not have risen to the surface. It would have diffused. 

She placed her wrist to the lock, and waited.

Thirty seconds. It was stinging.

One minute. Her hand was paling slightly.

One minute, thirty seconds. She was feeling dizzy.

And finally, the door swung open.

She tried shoving her arm in her pocket, but that only caused blood to spread across the thick material. She almost ran into the room. She didn’t have much time: blood was draining fast, and it would only be so long until she blacked out.

The filing cabinet was already lodged open, each folder labeled in alphabetical order by last name. 

B.

_ Barton, Barton...there. _

She yanked out the file. She was losing the flushed feeling that adrenaline brought. She didn’t have time to read it now, as she didn’t want to be found lying face down in the office. But she had to check one more thing first. 

She pulled out the first file she saw, one of the assassins’. She didn’t pay attention to the name. The only thing she took in were two bolded headings:  _ Mind wipe: complete  _ and _ 13th hub: inserted. _

Not thinking, she snatched up that file too and barreled out of the door, down the hallway, and into the dormitory doorway. 

Her head was spinning now, harder than ever. She practically collapsed into her bed. She needed to staunch the bleeding.

First, she shoved the files into her pillowcase and sewed it up, using her knife and a piece of string from the floor. Now no one would look at them.

Why did she not have bandages? Furious, and rapidly paling, she ripped her sheets off and wrapped them furiously around her wrist. Her last thought before blacking out was  _ good thing that those sheets were red. _

The first thing she saw when waking was the red walls.

_ Ah, not again. _

And then she saw Crimson’s face.

She would have jumped if she had been standing up and not practically pinned to a bed.

“You know, you were lucky I found you. You would have bled out on my floor, and I can’t have that, can I?”

Right. Like your floor wasn’t already red.

“Another initiate told me you had been sparring.”

What?

Crimson beckoned a girl out of the shadows. She had been in line with Lila on the first day of ballet. Yes, her hair was different from the others; parted a little rebelliously. And her vivid blue eyes had been more focused-looking than from the other girls in line. Guiltily, Lila realized she didn’t even know her name. She’d have to thank her later. But why on earth had she done that? She guessed that was one of the many mysteries she would never know the answer to.

“Carmine and Scarlet are not the same thing, are they? No, they are different shades of the same color, and that is precisely what you are now. Two different shades that need some blending.”

Crimson ushered the girl out the door, locked it, and bent down, her tone becoming softer, sweeter, and, if possible, even more dangerous.

“I know you’ve been in the files. I know everything that happens here. It wasn’t very hard to tell, as you were dripping blood everywhere. You are now onto your second and final chance. Oh, how tempted I was to just slip you some antibodies your body would react poorly to when they gave you more blood. Yes, the one thing we have an abundance of. Blood.” she paused for dramatic effect and Lila wriggled upright in her ward bed as much as she could.

“But it seems I couldn’t have even if I had wanted to: you have type B antibodies.” she scowled for a second.

“I cannot let this pass my gaze unnoticed. I already told you, if anyone else knew they’d stick a sword up your ribs. But no, I will not kill you. Not yet. There is more in store for you. But I will rush the process. We have most girls from the ages of five to twenty, fifteen years of training. I need to prep you in a few months, due to recent events. You will be pushed harder than ever, and this training does not come priceless. And I will tell you what you so dearly want to know so you will have nothing to fear.”

This was it. The moment she’d been waiting for. 

“The 13th hub is a run through we have tried a few times, and it seems it has worked especially well on you. The 13th hub are hundreds of tiny microprocessors we inject into your bloodstream, changing your DNA from a double helix to a triple helix. This is not like the supersoldier. This allows you to do things your normal human body could not adapt to for hundreds of years to make changes happen in seconds. Heightened reflexes, enhanced senses, a certain amount of healing, and, yes, it does seem to react well with the memory serum. If I pushed you off the top of a thirteen-story building, you’d land unscathed. We want our assassins strong, not weak.”

Ah. So they were being trained as H.Y.D.R.A.’s assassins. They got to do the messy work.

“So you  _ do  _ wipe their minds.”

“Their pasts make them weak.”

Lila shifted uncomfortably. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You are different. Your past only makes you stronger, unless we are really in desperation, when we will wipe your mind without a doubt. I should wipe your mind of what you saw in the files, but unlike the others, you will not change. You will simply rediscover.”

“Why?” she repeated weakly.

“Didn’t I already tell you? Carmine and scarlet, two different shades that just need to be blended.”


	8. Pick Your Poison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick spoiler: Coulson is alive for the purposes of this spoiler. Whether that is canon outside of this, youj can decide for yourself!

The next morning, Lila walked into one of the different rooms marked for their use today. It was more of a classroom than any of the others had been. Well, except for the barre in the front of the room and the rack of dresses in the back. 

Other initiates had already formed the same tight line they did in ballet, but thankfully without the tutus.

Lila spotted the girl from the ward immediately. 

“Hey. Um. Thanks for yesterday,” she whispered. The girl showed barely any recognition except for a nod.

“I’m Lila.”

“I know.”

“And you are…”

“Sashya.”

So she was Russian. Or she had been at some point. Lila was pretty sure Sashya was generally a boy’s name, though.

Lila paused, stalling.

“Why did you cover for me?”

“Because you know how to fly.”

“What?”

Sashya turned to face her. “You have been out there in the world already. We are confined, but raised to be fierce and independent. We come in as fledglings and exit with fully grown wings. We start as chicks then morph into vultures. 

“But you know what it's like out there. There is only one life we have ever known here, a brutal one that will guide us the right way in the end. But I want to know how it is beyond the walls of blood.”

Lila hesitated. These were H.Y.D.R.A.. But it wasn’t their fault. Sashya was right: they were raised as vultures to kill, to make use of every last scrap and bone, while she was born to fly.

Lila tried to sum it up. “There is family to love, and there are choices to make. There is light and shadow, and people trying to find where they belong. There are blue skies, silver mountains, fields of green. You are tied and grounded, in a way, because you know that there is red in you lurking below the surface. But you are also free.” 

Sashya smiled a little. “Thank you for telling me this. Somedays I do not know if this is the life I want to live, but this is the only life I have. And you are right, about the red. It will bubble back up eventually. There is no escaping it.”

“I know how that feels. My dad is Hawkeye. And you think it’d be great, having your dad as an Avenger, but he is rarely ever home, and when he is, not for long. We have to live away from society, in secret. So I live in a world hidden from myself, but that is so much freedom compared to this.”

“The Avengers are fools. Not because they fight for their freedom, and for the rest of the world, but because they think they can escape death. Whenever they win, something else is thrown their way. They fight a battle they are winning, but they stand on a sinking ship. It is only a matter of time before it pulls under the waves, and it would be stupid to stand on that ship with them.”

“But he’s my dad, and I can’t abandon him!”

“You won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“They mean to advance you, to get you out of here much faster than the lifetime others face. They want you in the world before someone comes to take you back. They can’t put off the sterilization for much longer now.”

“The...what?”

“Sterilization. They believe children to be the one thing that would distract you from a mission. The graduation has two parts, one that and one I do not know.”

“Do they really expect us to have kids already?”

Sashya grimaced. “You’ll understand today. Love is a weakness. And so is trust.”

  
  
  
  


Lila looked up as the door swung open. Crimson and another woman, younger, walked in. 

“Poisons today.” she said briskly. “Our poisons master has kindly supplied us for today.” she gestured loosely behind her to the other woman. They both slid onto bar stools to face the line.

“Four poisons will be placed in front of you. You have thirty seconds to memorize their names and look. They will be replaced with five glasses, all wine, four tainted, and one pure. Line them up from left to right in the order listed. You will drink the one you pick as wine in the end, so be warned: we only have so many antidotes.”

The poisons master slid the four jars onto the bar. “Hemlock. Powdered belladonna. Snake venom. Strychnine.”

“Your time starts now.”

Lila raced forward. The hemlock leaves were oblong and sharp. Belladonna had a fresh smell. The snake venom was almost clear, but tinged-that glass would be darker. And the strychnine. That one-

“Time’s up.”

Five glasses were replaced in place of the jars. White wine, thankfully. Less potent and easier to see poisons.

“Start.”

She shook each glass gently. At the bottom of the first one, white powder was left on the sides. The belladonna. The one with hints of something on the bottom was the strychnine, because it wasn’t supposed to be mixed with liquid. She put that one fourth. 

The remaining three glasses stood there, taunting, as she had no intention of being poisoned again.

The venom would be a liquid. Which glass was the most full?

They placed the fullest one at the end of the row.

She had no idea what to do now. Hemlock could take many forms.

What color was the wine her parents occasionally opened? Her mom only had white. It was clear, yellow-green tinged…maybe the hemlock one would be a little more green?

She examined them again. She couldn’t see a difference. She’d just had to go with her gut instinct.

“Bottoms up, everyone!” said Crimson loudly, tapping her nails against the bar.

Hesitating, Lila put the one in her right hand down and gingerly sipped from her glass.

Nothing happened.

That was, until one girl started choking on the floor. Foam bubbled up around her lips, frothy. She spluttered, trying to expel the poison from her system in vain, before collapsing.

The woman who had accompanied Crimson swept over, pulled out a syringe, and stabbed it into the girl’s arm. The foaming and spasms ceased in a few seconds.

Coming over to observe, Crimson bent over her and frowned.

“We’ll have to work on that one.”

She straightened up. “Wipe her and start over.”

Two figures entered and dragged her limp form out into the hallway. The door slammed behind them.

“Well done, the rest of you. Now, there is a dress on the rack with your name on it. Change, and I’ll tell you what’s next.”

They obediently shuffled over to the rack. Lila paused. Hers wasn’t hard to miss.

Streamlined and incandescent, the silver glinted menacingly at her eyes. The half sleeves were feathered from the wrist to elbow in black downy feathers, and the cuttingly deep V neckline was feathered on the sides to match. The zipper, which ran down most of the back, was far too easy to get into.

It was horrible.

Horrible because she looked good in it, horrible because she could see quite plainly what this was: she was their arrow, one that would fly true every time, and horrible because the only other word she could use to define it and the message it spoke was downright appalling.

She looked over to Sashya. Hers was, if possible, even worse: the scooped neckline ridiculously deep, the skirt very flowy, and the deep blue glossy like satin. It was awful because this was her future. They were using her undesirable beauty to their advantage, like it was their own. 

She hated the way that even she couldn’t let Sasha’s beauty fly past her. Her alabaster skin looked like silk against the red walls and her hair looked like spun copper.

Something hot flared inside her. Sashya was the only nice person here, and they were using her. She was meant to fight, not do whatever someone else wanted her to do.

Crimson grinned malevolently. “Time to practice with poisons! This will be one on one. We’ll bring someone, a traitor to our cause, in. Seduce them, have them spill their secrets, and kill them. It’s your choice of poison, so pick wisely.”

Holy gods above.

Wavering, Lila grabbed the coral snake venom and left for the hallway, Sashya at her heels.

_ Tick-tock. Tick-tock. How we all fear the clock. _

Time passed. and so did the line. She was next.

“Good luck,” she wished Sashya as she entered the room.

A man sat sprawled loosely over one of the stools. His hair was mussed and his eyes were unfocused. It wasn’t hard to tell he was an addict.

She slid onto the stool beside him uncomfortably. Something behind her shifted in the shadows. Crimson, she was sure of it.

She positioned herself so she was as far away from him as possible.

“Care for a drink?”

“Sure.”

“White or red?”

“Red.”

She reached for two glasses and a bottle of some red looking liquid. She had no idea what it would look like, and her mind was running in circles, thinking _illegalillegalillegal_. This would be a bit of a problem, as she would have to drink too. At least the venom would be hardly distinguishable from the liquid.

She carefully slipped some of the venom from the vial concealed by the feathers on the sleeves. He barely noticed. She passed him the glass.

“To you,” she said, raising the glass.

“To me,” he agreed drunkenly.

“To S.H.I.E.L.D,” he added suddenly. Lila moved forward. Here was something interesting.

“To S.H.I.E.L.D.” she added casually.

He drank deeply from the glass, and she sipped hesitantly and hers.

Her throat immediately started burning, an awful aftertaste left behind. She needed water, but taking some would reveal she was a stranger to this. She needed him to be more drunk, and quickly, before he started to feel the effects of the poison.

She refilled his glass, without the poison this time.

“Why S.H.I.E.L.D?” she asked, flinging a leg over to the front so the silver caught the light, hopefully distracting him from the fact he was being interrogated.

“I used to work there. But he took me away. Said I wasn’t fit for it anymore.” he started mumbling under his breath.

So they probably took him off when he started drinking. They didn’t kill him though, so they probably hid the unfit in some safehouse so as not to reveal any information. And then he’d been captured, and taken here.

She had never really wondered how all of that had been cleaned up after all of S.H.I.E.L.D. and H.Y.D.R.A’s information had been publicly released. Maybe there  _ were  _ some loose ends after all.

“Interesting. You’ve got something going there for yourself,” she said sweetly, in an uncanny impression of Crimson. “Pretty high up, were you?”

“Pretty, yeah,” he said, eyes sliding in and out of focus. “I was Coulson’s.”

So...that meant...Agent Coulson _hadn’t_ died after being nearly pulverized by Loki as dad had told mom. So what was his name-Fury?-had been hiding him.

Then she got it. Crimson had given her the worst agent in hopes that he wouldn’t recognize her. The sane ones probably would have her tagged. And Coulson. That was pretty juicy for H.Y.D.R.A.. Now, because of her doing this, he’d probably just been marked as one of their top targets.

“Pretty, yeah,” he muttered. Then his gaze slid to her. “You’re pretty.”

_ Oops. _

She slid off the stool and backed away, pouring another glass for him, heavily poisoned. She gave him the glass. He sipped, fumbling around.

_ Play with him. Go with it. _

“They said some crime cult was coming back. Was it this? No. you’re too nice to do crime.”

He caressed her hand and she tried hard not to flinch. She had thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was too well put together to allow embarrassing mistakes like this.

“Where is it. WHERE IS IT!”

“W-what?” she asked, trembling. She’d had enough. This place was a wolf den, and being alone was not working out. Luckily, the poison started working. He clawed at his throat, distracted, as his veins turned black.

Taking her chance, she raised her foot and smashed her boot’s heel into his gut. He doubled over. Following her leg through, she twisted in midair and kicked into him, knocking him over. 

“Pick your poison,” she whispered under her breath.

She grabbed his neck and pointed her knife at it, then faltered.

Was she really ready to make her first kill like this? Did it count as self-defense? 

She grabbed the glass and held it over him, keeping his neck twisted sideways. _I need to pass this test before Crimson kills me._

“You want to know what pain is?” she whispered. She smashed the glass on his face. The wine spilled everywhere, like blood. He had no chance. The shards of glass impaling his face all carried toxin.

She picked up her glass, furiously drained it, adrenaline too high to notice the burn in her throat, stamped on it with her boot, and picked up the largest shard.

She took a breath and held it in, not bearing to take another lest she give herself away. “That’s how it feels.” she hissed, stabbing it into the carotid artery in his neck and let the blood seep everywhere.

It was welcome this time.

  
  



	9. Kingdom of Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! Ready for a cliffhanger?

In the hallway, Lila wiped shards of glass from her dress. She had no intention of being stabbed with toxic glass. Sashya walked over, trembling. 

“How did it go?” she asked.

Sashya shivered. “I did it. He was out of his mind. But...but..” she shivered, fidgeting uncomfortably. Lila understood-she was terrified in the same way. 

“They made you do it, then?” 

Sashya nodded. 

Lila hadn’t escaped that same fate, but it seemed that Sashya hadn’t either. They had both killed. They were both cowards, willing to play whatever game Crimson had designed for them. And it was already tearing her apart.

“The work gets easier the more you do it. You live, you learn.”

Both of them turned around. Crimson was standing behind them.

“Soon, it’s just a pattern: learn, whisper, kill. It’s just like breathing. Second nature.”

Lila most certainly didn’t agree with that. How old was Sashya, nineteen? And she was even younger.

Crimson bent over so only Lila could hear. 

“You did well. I did not know Coulson was alive. I believed S.H.I.E.L.D remained like the scattered fragments of glass on the floor. But of course, things always change. And yes, we did raid that base. It would have just been smarter to kill all of them from the beginning, of course, but their hearts are not made of bulletproof glass, strong enough to absorb the shock, but also strong enough to know when to shatter, like ours.”

Ours. What a strange word. 

“You have shown us good things, and proved yourself. You are almost ready.”

A lower-ranking official turned the corner.

“Prep her for the wipe.” Crimson said.

She grinned as Lila stood rooted to the ground. 

She hadn’t meant to. She hadn’t wanted to. But here she was, stuck in a mess partially of her own making. Yes, she had been taken against her will, but what had she done to try and leave? Nothing. A tiny piece of her mind liked the danger, and the other part of her was scared out of her mind that she was living with her captors in what seemed like some sort of twisted fantasy. A warning bell went off in her head. Wasn't there a word for when captives sympathize with the one who holds them in chains? 

“The mind is a kingdom of glass, Lila. We will see the world outside the pane, and you will see the reflection. Do not worry. We will not shatter it. Just strengthen it. And then…”

She cut off, looking at Lila’s face and grinning bemusedly. 

“And then you will be invincible. You will be the Arrow.”

Pins and

silver-white flashes of 

color.

Spinning down

down

down

down

And Pepper.

Cassie.

Dad.

Morgan.

Mom.

Nate.

Crimson.

Sashya.

And then

nothing.

Just

blissful

nothing

  
  
  
  
  


Sashya grabbed her hand. 

“Are you ready?” 

“As I will ever be.” Lila released the tight grip. “The sterilization will be nothing compared to our training.”

She opened the door to the sterilization room. The many needles were daunting to many, but not to her.

“Down.” ordered one of the sterilizers. Lila laid down on the crisp white sheets. White, not red.

“Any last wishes?”

Lila grinned, unfazed.

“Knock me out, will you?”

“Gladly.”

  
  
  


Lila bit her lip. The sterilization had made her queasy. Even the 13th hub didn’t do anything for the alteration of organs.

“You did it.” Sashya said admiringly. “You are going back out there.”

“I am.” Lila agreed. Crimson had given her a new outfit, a spin on the standard black bodysuits. The belt and low-heeled boots were silver, the sleeves cuffed with red and gray feathers, and a shining red logo of an arrow on her chest.

“Almost.” It was Crimson, smiling slightly. “Just one last test.”

“One last test.” she echoed, following Crimson back to the armory. Where it all started. The training, at least. Something else, too, painful, but she couldn't reach that memory.

Shackled to the wall were two girls, one no more than five and the other possibly thirteen. They both looked frightened to death.

“All you have to do is kill them.” whispered Crimson. “Nice and clean. Any way you desire. The more creative, the more points to you.”

Something was tugging at her head, a memory lost to time.

She pulled out her guns, one in each hand. She lined each one up with each of their chests.

“Lila?” whispered Cassie.

And then she remembered.


	10. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I continue, hey, thanks to all of you reading this! This is my first fic, and all of you reading this are making my day. :) Please hold on, I've got the beginnings of a finale in store...

“You two-faced liar!” she hissed. Crimson had pulled out her gun. Her lips were already moving. Her earpiece.

Lila leaped at Crimson, pulling the triggers without really thinking. Crimson let out a cry of pain. A large red splotch had appeared on her side. Moaning, she sank down the wall. Lila reached out to smash her earpiece so no backup could come, but two things happened at once: the sirens went off, and as Lila turned, Crimson pulled out her gun. Two shots fired consecutively. Something hot and sharp pierced her shoulder. Her hand came away red with blood.

Lila opened her mouth to swear at Crimson, but instead she sank down, trying to stifle the blood flow. It was pain beyond the sterilization, the poison, the blood loss. The 13th hub was preventing her from going into shock and already stitching her back together,, but she almost wished she could be in shock. Anything was better than this hot, indescribable fury spreading throughout her body.

Cassie screamed. Cassie. She had to get Cassie and Morgan out of there. She tried to walk forward, fell, and swore. If she couldn’t walk towards them, she would crawl.

Just then, the door burst open. A tall figure with swishing blond hair stormed in. 

“Cassie! Morgan! Lila!”

“Hey, Pepper,” she managed, sinking into the wall. Blood was pooling around her feet.

“Who-”

She stormed towards Crimson, who had managed to get back to her feet, one hand clutched to her side, and one hand up, gun trained to Pepper’s face.

“Never.” Pepper hissed. “You will never get them.”

“Really?” said Crimson, just as sweetly as ever. Using this as a distraction, Lila tried to scooch across the floor towards Cassie and Morgan. Crimson saw this, though, and aimed for Lila’s head.

Pepper rammed her side into Crimson’s arm. The shot went wide and hit the floor.

Four more shots rang out, but Lila couldn’t see what happened, just a heel ramming into Crimson’s wounded side and a gun flying through the air.

Pepper trained the gun at Crimson, the barrel pressing into the sound of her head. A red patch was spreading on the arm of her white, button down shirt, but Pepper seemed unfazed.

Pepper smashed the barrel into Crimson’s head, hard enough to concuss.

“That was for Morgan.” she hissed. Pepper punched her in the face so hard she was sure she heard something on Crimson’s face break.

“Never again, you filthy beast.”

Pepper ran over to where Cassie and Morgan were chained down.

“I can do it.” Lila said hoarsely.   
“No you can’t,” said Pepper. “You’ve just been shot!”

“So have you! And besides, they did something to me, enhancement...I can do this.”

Lila grabbed onto Cassie’s shackled and pulled. They broke fast and Cassie stepped out of the tangled mess. 

“Cassie! Help!” Lila tugged at Morgan’s bonds. She was becoming less weak. _Pull, just one more pull…_

She yanked back with such force that Morgan was flung towards Pepper who was waiting there to scoop Morgan up in her arms.

“You okay, sweetie?” Pepper asked gently. Morgan nodded in a manner both shaken and pompous at once. “I want a cheeseburger.” she said squeakily.

Pepper smiled a bit. “After we get out of here, okay?”

She pushed open the door and they ran outside. 

“Which way?” asked Pepper, panting. 

“That way,” she said, Lila leaning against the wall to catch her breath. 

“Wait! The files!” She choked.

“The what?” asked Pepper, spinning around. “We need to get out of here!”

“They...have it all.” she said, spitting out blood. “All the answers.”

Pepper opened her mouth to speak, but Cassie beat her to it. “Where?”

“In the dormitory. First balck door down the hall, to the right. Hidden in a pillow, it’s stitched closed.”

Cassie nodded and sprinted out towards the room Lila had just described. Pepper tested the door we needed to exit from. “Locked.” she said, sounding pained at the thought. 

Lila took a deep breath and rammed her good shoulder into the door. It practically fell off its hinges. Lila had never been so glad to see the world outside. 

Cassie still wasn’t back. “Pepper, you go. Take Morgan. I’ll wait for Cassie.”

“Lila-”

“Go!”

Pepper and Morgan bolted out the door onto the bridge outside.

Just then, Cassie turned the corner. “Help!” she shouted, clutching the pillow to her chest. It didn’t take long to see what the problem was. Cassie was being pursued.

“Get out!” 

Cassie didn’t need to be told twice. 

Lila turned to face the attackers. They both pulled out their pistols. She shot the first one, who stumbled backwards, then leapt onto the shoulders of the second one, twisting her legs around her neck, swinging around, kicking her, and dismounted neatly. She was dead, strangled. 

Wow. She had never realized how hard that was when Aunt Nat did that.

The second guard had gotten up. Lila lifted the gun and fired without a doubt. 

They were dead in seconds.

Her heart was the glass they had made it there.

_Hard enough to be bulletproof. Strong enough to shatter._

She ran out the door onto the bridge, a few yards behind Cassie. The 13th hub had increased her speed, too, and she was passing Cassie in no time.

“Come on!” She must have looked weird, outrunning Cassie while bleeding like hell.

Cassie nodded. 

They were nearly to Pepper when the bridge started shaking.

“Lila! It’s gonna blow!” Cassie’s voice carried on the wind. Shoot. They must have rigged it in case anyone tried to escape. 

“Run!” she shouted. The middle of the bridge started caving in behind Pepper, and in front of them. They would fall in with the bridge.

Lila, without thinking, grabbed Cassie as the pavement beneath their feet started to crumble.

She ran…..and jumped.

They sailed across the vast expanse of nothingness, Cassie clinging to Lila’s side. The ground was coming closer and closer and-

They hit the ground hard at a roll, Cassie tumbling over Lila as they were thrown just feet away from the broken edge of the bridge, feet away from a watery death.

A small, streamlined plane landed in front of them, bearing the logo _STARK_ on the side. The ramp in the back lowered. 

Ah. So Pepper had brought the jet.

Lila and Cassie ran towards the ramp and reached halfway up as the plane started to gently rise, dashing inside the jet before the ramp could close on them.

And watched the eerily beautiful sight of the last of the bridge crumble into the water beneath them.

  
  
  
  



	11. The Tesseract

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter might be a little confusing, and although I did do research and tried to summarize it the best I could, if you are still interested, I would look into tesseracts on Wikipedia. I tried to connect it to the MCU and the concept of the infinity stones, but I can't guarantee it's perfect. Anyway, thanks again!

Aboard the jet, Lila paced, because otherwise she’d make the luxurious leather seats bloody. Not that pacing was helping, it just made everything more painful. 

Cassie and Morgan were eating at a table in another room on the jet. Morgan had, as promised, gotten her cheeseburger. 

“Jarvis. Set flight destination to home.” Pepper commanded the plane. 

“Calculating.  _ Home  _ is approximately 5,367 miles away. Commencing autopilot sequence.”

Pepper bent down to rummage in a drawer. “Lila, how bad is it?”

“Hm?”

Pepper sighed and walked over to Lila, pulling the curtain separating them and the girls shut and pulled down the back of her shirt. Pepper dabbed at it with something soft that wiped away most of the blood, which was a relief.

“Now I can see,” Pepper muttered, shoving Lila into a seat. “Morgan,  _ where  _ did you put E.D.I.T.H?”

Morgan replied something that she couldn’t hear, her ears were ringing too badly.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, SOMEWHERE ON THE PLANE?!”

Pepper sighed and stormed off to look for E.DI.T.H, whatever that was. Lila pressed her hand to her shoulder and immediately regretted it: instead of the fire she had felt before, this was ice so cold it burned to the touch.

Pepper returned wearing a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. “E.D.I.T.H. Analyze.”

Pepper listened to something Lila couldn’t make out, but it projected a hologram that Pepper understood.

“Brace yourself,” Pepper said, and before Lila’s brain actually processed that command, Pepper had pressed cold metal to her back and squeezed.

“What-ahhh! Pepper, that hurts!”

Pain shot like a fiery bolt of lightning throughout her body.

“Sorry,” said Pepper, holding up something for her to see, “but I needed to get this out.”

She held a pair of tweezers, closely gripping the remains of a silver bullet. 

“It wasn’t too deep, luckily. Also, you have a lot to explain.”

Lila sighed as Pepper reached for the gauze. “What about you?”

Pepper smiled vaguely. “I’ve fallen two hundred feet into a wildfire. I’ll be fine.”

So Lila started, how she had been kidnapped by H.Y.D.R.A., taken to the red room, trained, broken, and altered.

When she finished, Pepper just said, “EDITH, full body scan.”

Lila was amazed to see a 3-D holographic version of herself appear. Pepper drew in a sharp breath.

“I see what you meant.”

The not-Lila holograph was incredible. She had changed, and it reflected that. There were additional specks flowing through her bloodstream that were sending messages to her brain faster than normal. Her pain receptors had reduced in size, and, as promised, upon closer viewing, her DNA was now a triple helix. 

“It’s like what they did with Steve. They made him the supersoldier.” murmured Pepper. 

“Where are the files?” she asked. Pepper pulled them out from a drawer and sat down across from Lila. Lila opened her file.

_ Name: Lila Barton _

_ Mother: Laura Barton _

_ Father: Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye _

_ Age: Possibly 17 _

_ Location: Unknown _

“Possibly seventeen?”

Lila shifted uncomfortably. “Crim-she said that I had been living in another dimension for the past five years.” Pepper sat, deep in thought, as Lila reached for the other file. As she picked it up, something else fell out. 

Lila picked it up, wincing as she did so. The front was marked TOP SECRET.

_ Well, that’s stupid,  _ she thought.  _ Then of course people will want to read it. _

She opened the file. A few papers fell loose, slid to Pepper’s side of the table, and fell to the ground, like loose fletching.

_ Remains from an arrow that hit its mark. _

Pepper stooped down to pick them up. She froze.

“What is it?”

“These files are in my garage.”

Pepper passed it to Lila. 

**A tetrahedron forms the convex hull of the tesseract's vertex-centered central projection. Four of 8 cubic cells are shown. The 16th vertex is projected to infinity and the four edges to it are not shown.**

**A tesseract is in principle obtained by combining two cubes. The scheme is similar to the construction of a cube from two squares: juxtapose two copies of the lower-dimensional cube and connect the corresponding vertices. Each edge of a tesseract is of the same length. This view is of interest when using tesseracts as the basis for a network topology to link multiple processors in parallel computing.**

**Does the Tesseract follow principles of Euclidean space?**

And then

**It is possible to project tesseracts into three- and two-dimensional spaces, similarly to projecting a cube into five-dimensional space?**

The words  _ Infinity  _ and  _ Network Topology  _ were highlighted. 

“Pepper, what is network topology?” she asked, but E.D.I.T.H had already answered.

“Network topology is the arrangement of the elements of a communication network. Network topology can be used to define or describe the arrangement of various types of telecommunication networks. This view is of interest when using tesseracts as the basis for a network topology to link multiple processors in parallel computing.”

“But that’s not the point,” Pepper said. “What they were trying to get at was the point that tesseracts can be projected in three different dimensions, it may be possible to do so in the fifth dimension of space. Euclidean space is the fundamental space of  geometry . Originally, this was the  three-dimensional space of  Euclidean geometry , but, in modern  mathematics , there are Euclidean spaces of any nonnegative integer dimension, including the three-dimensional space and the  _ Euclidean plane _ , or the second dimension. Greek astronomers used this concept for mapping out the physical universe.” She sighed. “I sound just like Tony, don’t I?”

“You do,” agreed Jarvis unhelpfully. “You just don’t ask me to make you power smoothies in the morning.”

“Why are these the same files in your garage?” she asked.

“Because Tony was working on a new invention of his before he left, it-” her eyes widened.   
“What is it?”

“Lila, I am so glad you grabbed these. H.Y.D.R.A. cannot by any circumstance get these back.”

“Why?”

“Tony was working on a teleportation device prototype.”

“So? That’s cool, but what’s the problem?”

Pepper stopped pacing and set down the files, looking Lila straight into the eye.

“The basic physics of teleportation are the breakdown of particles and remaking them in a different place. Quantum physics. But which two dimensions would that entail?”

“Moving through time and space?”

“Precisely. And that would mean they would contain the formula for two infinity stones. That’s why  _ infinity  _ was highlighted.”

Pepper took a deep breath.

“That would mean H.Y.D.R.A. knows how to properly re-create two of the six infinity stones. As if one wasn’t powerful enough. It would be the first step to all the power in the universe, and ultimately their seventy-year old dream of world domination.”


	12. Follow Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let you know, this chapter includes Lila having some suicidal thoughts and a bit of PTSD. Note, this is not very realistic, so sorry about that.

The plane touched down in front of the Stark’s cabin.

Lila staggered out behind Cassie and Morgan, Pepper clutching the files.

They sat down in the living room. Pepper shooed Cassie and Morgan away upstairs, baiting them with cookies.

“Morgan would love to show you her inventions, Cassie. Do you mind?”

“Sure,” Cassie said, shrugging, and followed Morgan upstairs with the plate of cookies.

Then Lila remembered something.

“Coulson.”

“What?”

“Agent Coulson. He was one of Fury’s before S.H.I.E.L.D was disbanded. And he’s alive. H.Y.D.R.A. wants him now, and it’s my fault.”

“Of course it isn’t.” said Pepper consolingly.

Lila stood up, frustrated. “You don’t get it! You weren’t supposed to play some guy and then kill him!”

“You...what?”

Lila may have forgotten that piece of information. It had purposely not come up when she was explaining everything to Pepper on the plane.

“They raided this base and...and…”

She had a dam building up inside her chest, and the water was pounding so hard it was ready to burst. She burst out sobbing. “And you know what I did? I killed him. I listened to them. I did the thing that they wanted me to do!”

“Lila-”

“Lila’s gone! She’s dead! She’s only a murderer now!”

“Lila, I know this is hard for you-”

“You just don’t get it! I don’t deserve to live. I should have killed myself there. I had so many chances, the halls were literally lined with weapons! I am only the monster they made me now!”

She furiously grabbed for her knife, ignoring the shock of pain it sent up her shoulder.

“Lila, I’m not going to let you kill yourself on my carpet.”

Lila whipped around. It was like seeing Crimson again. 

“You know what? That’s exactly what she said, too,” she growled, her voice getting louder. “ _I_ _can’t have you bleed out on my floor_. WHO CARES ABOUT THE STUPID FLOOR!”

Lila threw the knife down. “I need a glass.”

“Why?”

“I need a glass, okay?”

Pepper, sensing trouble, did not give her a glass. 

“I need it to end like _his_ life did. You know how I did it? I smashed the poisoned glass on his face, and then slit his neck. It needs to be the same for me.”

“Then I am most certainly not giving you a glass, which Morgan will tease you relentlessly about because she is so proud that I let her use the glass cups on occasion.”

Lila was about ready to scream.

“There was a song,” Pepper said hesitantly, “That always helped me. I mean, it was for more of those times when I chose to wallow in sorrow, but I think you will understand.

Pepper awkwardly cleared her throat.

_“Will you, will you, follow behind me_

_As I search at midnight_

_For the dark star above me_

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me?_

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me?_

_Even when my breath is last_

_And I tell you to flee_

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me?_

_Will you, will you, follow behind me_

_If I tie a necklace of rope_

_’Round our necks_

_And promise we’ll be free?_

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me?_

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me?_

_As I lay down to rest_

_Beneath a hanging tree_

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me?”_

  
  


The silence lingered in a strange way.

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me_

_As I lay down to rest_

_Beneath a hanging tree_

_Will you, will you_

_Follow behind me?_

No, she would not follow. She would not let H.Y.D.R.A. control her.

“I am the arrow now,” she whispered, so Pepper wouldn’t hear. “I fly true.”

She set down the knife.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	13. Target Acquired

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again, sorry for updating really late...I had a very busy day. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

“Coulson…” Pepper muttered. “Where would we find a supposedly dead S.H.I.E.L.D agent?”

She paced around the room as Cassie and Morgan returned the now-empty plate of cookies. 

“You ate them all?” Pepper asked incredulously.

“There weren’t that many,” Cassie said sheepishly. 

“Just twenty or so.” Morgan added, happily munching on the remains of the last one.

Just then, Lila saw a spark in Pepper’s eyes as if she had just remembered something. “Cassie, where do you live?”

Cassie’s voice cracked. “They’re all gone. Mom, Dad, my stepdad...they all vanished.”

“You were alone?” Pepper asked, seemingly furious at herself. “Cassie, you’re staying here until we sort this out.”

“Sort what out?”

Pepper glanced back to Lila, who shrugged. She would’ve figured it out sooner or later.

“Girls...we may have to go again. There are people we need to find, the ones who took you, and we need to go now.”

“That’s okay,” said Cassie, though there was a slight tremor in her voice. Lila would be scared after living alone for that long and being kidnapped, too. Actually, scratch that: she had. Been there, done that. But Cassie was still younger than her.

“Absolutely not. I am not going to leave you alone again.”

Morgan let out a sort of a moan as her hand scrabbled for more cookies that weren’t there. 

“I’m ineptendant now!”

Both Cassie and Lila giggled relatively indiscreetly at Morgan’s jumbled sentence. 

“Pepper,” she began hesitantly, “It’s not like we can just leave them in the plane or anything. And we don’t even know where we are going.”

Morgan contemptuously placed E.D.I.T.H on her face. 

“E.D.I.T.H, where do we find a not-dead person?” she asked, in an attempt to sound cavalier.

Pepper glanced at Lila as if to say  _ too loud. _

“Specify, please.”

Lila reached for E.D.I.T.H and slid it onto her own face, ignoring Morgan’s snickers.

“Locate Phil Coulson.”

An image of his face popped up in front of her. 

“E.D.I.T.H, do you know every single person’s identity or what?”

“I do, in fact, along with a ‘dictionary’ of every single organism and-”

_ “E.D.I.T.H.” _

“My apologies. Would you like to mark Phil Coulson as a target?”

“Uh-” 

She was about to say yes when she saw Pepper frantically waving at her and mouthing  _ NO.  _

“No. What does that do, anyways?” she asked.

“It initiates an immediate high-accuracy drone strike upon the target.”

“I’m glad I asked.”

Pepper moaned. “Did Tony program you? Actually, of course he did. I’m actually surprised he didn’t bring E.D.I.T.H with him.”

“Where is this guy?”asked Cassie interestedly. 

“Agent Coulson’s last known location was New York City, but I have tracked him to Las Cruces, New Mexico.”

Cassie opened her mouth to ask something else, but E.D.I.T.H interrupted, adding “But I have additionally located him to Santa Monica, California.”

Pepper frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that much.”

“We’ll have to split up, then,” said Lila. She understood that Pepper was quite reluctant to let any of them leave them again. “I can go alone.”

“You will most certainly not go alone!” Pepper said.

“It’s not like you’re going to leave Cassie or Morgan here!”

“I can go with Lila!” Cassie protested.

“I don’t want to go alone!” Morgan wailed.

“See?” Lila rounded on Pepper. “It’s the only way. I can take care of myself. If you stop me, I’ll just go myself. If there’s anything I learned from the Red Room, it’s how to fight.”

Morgan crossed her arms disdainfully as Pepper sighed. 

“I suppose you’re right. I can’t make you come if you don’t want to.”

She picked up Lila’s knife and passed it back, as Morgan was now showing interest in it.

“But I can give you a ride.”

  
  
  
  
  


The landscape below the plane was changing rapidly. Rivers to meadows to forests to mountains, it was like paint smearing together below the wings of the jet.

“California or New Mexico?” Pepper called out from the cockpit. 

“I’ll take California.”

Pepper smiled vaguely. “Of course you get the warm, sandy beaches. Tell me if you pass by 10880 Malibu Point Drive.”

“Is that where you live?”

“It’s a bit hard to miss, yes.”

“Where are we!” shouted Morgan from the other room.

Lila looked out of one of the windows. The mountains were clearing into wide stretches of plains and marshland. They had already crossed the Appalachians.

Pepper followed her gaze. “My bet is for South Carolina? Or maybe Georgia. We’re close.” 

“Jarvis! Where are we?”

“We are over Georgia, on the Florida border.” he said in his somewhat robotic voice. 

“Uh, Jarvis,” Lila asked, still a bit confused as to why she was talking to artificial intelligence that she couldn’t even see but was still driving the plane. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” he said as they began their descent a few hours later. They lowered over a cliff.

“Jarvis-”

“It’s cloaked from above.”

The plane landed along the rocky cliffside. Lila stepped out, surveying the mess of rocks and tidepools twenty feet below. She looked up. Where there was once nothing, there was now a large, rectangular silver building, rather inconspicuous. 

“You’re sure you can handle this?” Pepper called over the howl of the wind against the cliffside. 

“I’m sure.” she replied. She took out her phone. “I’ll call you when I’m finished.”

Pepper nodded. “Roger that.”

The plane hatch closed and the jet took off once more.

Lila hesitated, then walked over to the doors. Not really thinking, she kicked them open. The sound resonated around metal. That’s really all it was: metal. 

The inside looked just like the outside had, but there were huge scraps of metal everywhere. Occasionally, there were a few welding devices or piles of screws and washers, but still metal. 

“Hello?” she called out, sounding rather stupid herself. “Agent Coulson?”

There was just silence. 

She walked farther into the maze. The deeper she got, the stronger the sound there was of hammering. An uneasy feeling swept down her back and she whipped around.

There was Agent Coulson. Or was it? 

“Uh. Hi. I’m Lila. Hawkeye’s daughter.”

She waited for a sign of recognition that never came.

“Agent Coulson?”

“How do you know who I am?”

There was something weird about his voice. She couldn’t place it, but let him lead her outside anyways. 

“I…My dad?”

“Your dad.”

Lila fidgeted. She had no idea if Hawkeye had ever even met Agent Coulson, much less worked with him.

And she placed another thing wrong about him. Her hair was blowing hard into her face, but his hadn’t even moved.

“You’re not Coulson, are you?” 

He smiled unnaturally.

“No. I’m not.”

The disguise dropped.

Where there once had been a man of about fifty, there now was the metal figure of one of Ultron’s Steel Corps. 

Lila reached for her phone. She had to get to Pepper, now. 

The robot lunged at her, knocking the device out of her hands. It skidded to a halt along the sandy cliffside. 

Momentarily looking away, Lila nearly was hit by the full force of a metal arm. She ducked, parrying another blow, and dove for the phone. The robot was on top of her, and she struggled to get out from underneath as less and less oxygen reached her lungs. She swung an arm upwards while twisting her leg and flipping on top of it as its attention was diverted to her fist. 

Scrambling upwards, she pressed the call button on her phone. It rang, and then stopped. Pepper wasn’t responding.

As the phone went into voicemail, the robot threw itself towards Lila, who sidestepped. Her ankle twisted as she looked for footing. She was at the edge of the cliff.

The phone tumbled down into the seaside abyss below. Her eyes followed it as it smashed upon the rocks. She was alone now.

Her breath was knocked out at full force by the robot as it wrenched her arm and pushed her back.

Losing her footing, they scrabbled in midair for a moment as its weight pushed them both of the cliffside.

There wasn’t enough air for her to scream.

  
  
  
  


They 

tumbled 

Down, 

Down,

Down,

Down

Down

girl and metal. 

She tried to shift her position so it would land under her. The rocks and waves below came 

closer 

and 

closer. 

She shut her eyes.

It only hurt for a moment.


	14. Into The Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An alternate chapter title: catching up with Coulson  
> FYI I haven't watched Agents of Shield and was recently informed that half of the seasons aren't even canon...does that make it a giant fic?

She opened her eyes. The robot’s body was sprawled beneath her: the limbs broken, body dented, red gleam in the eyes gone.

She stood up. Her clothes were soaked through, and ripped in some places. The salty breeze was cold, but she felt like she should have been colder. Probably the 13th hub’s work.

_ I could push you off the top of a thirteen story building and you’d land, unscathed. _

She looked up. The cliffside looked so much taller from underneath it. 

Her phone lay smashed on a rock, about to be swept up by a wave. Each piece of glass swept away one at a time, sickeningly reminding her of her hand slicing across a neck, watching as the man choked on his own blood.

A whirring sound from above greeted her ears. Gazing upward, she saw Pepper’s jet. She waved her arms frantically, praying that she would be seen. The jet lowered and the back opened. She ran inside without hesitation.

“Pepper!”

Pepper was waiting just inside.

“Lila! You’re soaking. What happened?”

Both of them turned towards the cliffside.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Lila.”

“I didn’t try to! I found Coulson, but it was really one of Ultron’s, and we fought and he sort of pushed me off the cliff.”

“What is going on?” 

They both turned as the real Coulson walked in. 

“Pepper…”

Coulson scrutinized Lila. “Are you Clint’s daughter?”

“Yeah.” she replied awkwardly. 

He smiled. “You look a lot like him.” 

It was still impossibly strange that he was still alive. Lila didn’t know his backstory, but she’d heard at least once that he was dead. And yet, here he was, standing right here, in front of her. She couldn’t help her mind creating all sorts of strange stories of escape or rebirth.

“We found Agent Coulson in New Mexico, like we planned,” said Pepper. “It was Cassie’s idea really, we just had to ask Jarvis.”

“Stark’s?” Coulson asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I can function on my own, you know!” came Jarvis’s muffled voice from the cockpit.

“I’m the one driving your plane!”

Coulson and Lila sat down across from each other.

“So,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

So Lila recounted how she had seen the Steel Corps in the woods, how she’s been kidnapped, taken to the red room, rescued, how H.Y.D.R.A. was searching for him, and their plan to artificially recreate 

“I figured something like this would happen,” he said. “There’s an old S.H.I.E.L.D-run air base last used in 1995. Fury closed it soon after Carol returned. Personally, I think it had something to do with a cat.”

Lila looked questionally at Pepper, who just shrugged back. 

“Where exactly are we going?” 

Coulson half-grimaced. “We’re using me as bait.”

“What?”

“We are going right to H.Y.D.R.A..”

  
  


Lila froze for a second, barely noticing how her fingers twitched at the thought. 

“Going...how do you even know where they are?” Then a thought hit her.

“We’re not going back to the red room, are we?”

“No, we’re not,” he agreed. “That would be suicide.”

“So what’s the plan, then?” she asked.

“They want me because I know about the space stone. The tesseract was an important study of S.H.I.E.L.D., and one we never entirely figured out. And the mind stone was in Loki’s staff, you say? Well, I’ve come face to face with that, too. 

“If they want to recreate the stones, they’ll want to be in a place with a powerful connection to as many as possible. Pepper, four stones have previously had the chance of visiting New York. The one in Loki’s staff, the tesseract, the aether, and the eye of Agamotto: mind, space, reality, and time. It would naturally hold the strongest connection.”

“New York City,” she repeated. “So what do I have to do?”

Pepper smiled. “Lila. You don’t have to do anything.”

Something hot flamed inside her. “When have I  _ not  _ had to do something? There’s always more, so don’t tell me I won’t get mixed up in it. I don’t care if I have to do something anymore, and I don’t care if I die doing it. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. Nothing matters.”

She could see that Pepper looked pained. She had been wrong: people  _ did  _ care about her. Pepper, and Cassie, her dad, if he was alive, and little Morgan. She just couldn’t do this to Morgan.

Coulson’s expression was of one who was reading right through her. Yes, he wanted her to live, too, even though they barely knew each other.

“You’re right. It never ends. Have you seen how many times New York has gotten destroyed? My house too.” said Pepper.

“We just keep on making the same stupid mistakes over and over again, never learning. Trust me, I’d know. Look at my husband.”

Lila didn’t say anything. H.Y.D.R.A. would be lured, whether she liked it or not, and that was that. 

“How much would you do to get the time stone, to go back to your normal life, to be free again?” asked Agent Coulson, leaning against the table.

“Anything ” she whispered, almost afraid to hear the words disappear from her head to her tongue aloud.

“Anything.” he echoed.

“That’s H.Y.D.R.A.’s idea. See, they may be bent on world domination, or maybe Ultron was, but the people he controls through the Legion, H.Y.D.R.A., are still human. There are things that we just keep wanting. Greed is part of our nature. We were not born into it, nor deceit or lies, but it is a warm coat we wear to protect ourselves, to survive. They are not born monsters, they are the monsters that they have made themselves. They cannot help this, as we cannot. But we can work against it.”

“And use it to our advantage.” she said. “But what if they take you? How do we know they do not possess the means of creating one of the other four?”

Pepper and Coulson glanced at each other. 

“Lila...they already have two, so we have no choice but to succeed.”

“They...what?” her voice felt dry.

“Which ones? How?”

“The mind stone and the aether.” said Coulson carefully. “The mind stone was really what created Ultron, wasn’t it? They had it from the beginning, the moment Utron, as best as we can say for AI, died.”

“And the aether?” she asked hoarsely.

“The aether is the only one that can’t be replicated. It doesn’t really have a physical form. It’s sort of like a mist. A red mist.”

Red. Again. How she hated that color.

“But then how did they get it? Didn’t Thanos get it?” she asked.

“You see,” began Coulson, “The aether is peculiar. Thor recounted to me once, that the aether found a human body to take, from his girlfriend, Jane. The aether can be everywhere if not trapped, and it is my belief that they figured out how to extract a small portion of it. The mind stone is the foundation of Ultron’s replicas, as they are all him in a way, and so therefore the H.Y.D.R.A. that they control also seem to possess some of the complex mechanics of it in their heads as well.”

Lila bit down on her lip. This was a lot to take in.

“What happens if we fail?”

“They will have two more of the stones.”

  
  


“Where exactly are we going?”

Pepper shrugged. “I don’t know, Jarvis is taking us. And as long as we have him, we will always know the way back to the base.”

A crash sounded from behind them. Pepper pulled back the curtain.

“Pepper! Morgan nearly broke E.D.I.T.H.!” called Cassie.

“How did you even find it?” Pepper demanded. “I swear I took that away.”

“It’s not much use if you leave it in the overhead drawers,” said Coulson, grinning. “She just had to stand on the table.”

Pepper fumed and stomped away, scolding Morgan as she did so.

“What about the other two?” Lila quietly inquired, as so the other three wouldn’t hear. 

“The power stone kills anyone who touches it,” he replied swiftly. “That will be a challenge. And the soul stone...I don’t even know about that. All anybody knows about that is that Thanos went to another planet with his daughter, and came back with the stone but without her. Those two would be the hardest to retrieve, in my opinion.”

Lila nodded.

“Destination reached.” said Jarvis, and their attention followed back to him.

Lila, Cassie, and Morgan all crowded around one of the windows. 

A building similar to the one where she had landed in front of in Santa Monica glistened below them. 

“We’ve got to land in the forest. It’s H.Y.D.R.A., we can’t have them blowing our jet.” said Pepper.

“Cassie. Morgan. Stay in the plane. This will be dangerous.”

Morgan pouted, and Cassie wore a similar expression.

“Lila-I’m reluctant to do this again, but you need to buy us time. Coulson and I are going to sneak in, and I’m going to dress in the H.Y.D.R.A. outfits and pretend I’ve captured him. If all goes well, we’ll have a chance to bargain with them.”

Lila nodded. She wouldn’t have to come in contact with anybody.

Not even Sashya.

_ Sashya. _

She realized with a sharp pang that she hadn’t even given Sashya a single thought since her escape. Something about that made her heart feel very brittle.

The hatch in the back opened and Lila, Pepper, and Coulson exited.

“Jarvis-lock them in.” Pepper said, much to Cassie and Morgan’s protests, and they didn’t wait for Jarvis’s response as the back closed behind them.

They walked out into the frosty twilight forest, colder than she expected it to be at the end of summer. Luckily, she was wearing her old black suit that H.Y.D.R.A. had given them for the Red Room, and with the 13th hub, she was prevented from feeling the cold the way the other two must have been.

“Going in through the side,” Pepper whispered as they approached the building. “Up that tree.” Lila looked at the tree that ran all the way up to a slim glass window about fourteen feet up.

“They call this place The Deep,” informed Coulson as they scaled the tree, Lila at the window in seconds.

“Why?” she hissed back.

“They run all their experiments here,” he replied. “Some things far too complex to be messed with. Or at least, that should be.”

Lila examined the pane. It could be smashed fairly easily, but that would trigger some sort of alarm.

“Don’t worry,” said Pepper. “I had Jarvis disable their sound system beforehand. There will be no alarm.” She reached out to smash the glass, but Lila stopped her. “I’m more immune to everything, remember?” 

Pepper hesitated, but let her do it all the same. Lila stood up on the branch, paced back, and ran at the glass, flying through it and letting a well-placed kick decimate it. She landed lightly on her feet a few meters below on a pathway that seemed to run around the uppermost floor, brushing aside any glass shards she saw on herself. She expected most of the floors were underground.

“All clear!” she shouted back up. Pepper and Coulson came through the window, Pepper landing in a neat roll and Coulson landing much less gracefully but safely all the same. 

Lila swiftly stepped towards the nearest door. “You’ll probably be good going here, it’s a broom closet. H.Y.D.R.A. should have something you can change into.”

Pepper nodded and emerged wearing a similar outfit to hers, but it had the H.Y.D.R.A. symbol printed in an acidic green color on the shoulder, and there was a case for extra ammunition on her belt.

Lila looked out the window, hoping Morgan and Cassie were secure. For the first time that day, she felt a shred of doubt in her own abilities.

“You’re my captive now,” said Pepper to Coulson, gripping his arm tightly. “Act like it.”

They headed towards the only other door on the level, a stairwell. They went down two floors, but stopped.   
“Lila. Stay on the floor above us. Take this, and press it if there’s danger or you need us.” Pepper handed her a small piece of metal with a button. “Stay safe.” They closed the door behind them as Lila went back up the stairwell.

Into the Deep.

  
  
  



	15. Crimson Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you missing an infiltration mission, here's a short one for you! Yay! I guess we'll discover if Cassie and Morgan are any good in a fight...and also lizards, because those lizard things in Guardians need a cameo. Probably makes no sense but they're there. Deal with it. ;P

Lila headed back up the stairwell to the floor above. It was abandoned. That was good, but also quite unsettling. It could mean that everyone was in one place, which is what she feared, because then Pepper and Agent Coulson had no chance against that many people.

She started to pace lightly, not exactly sure what to do.

There was one door slightly ajar to her left, omitting a strange, purplish light. It was sort of ominous, and going there was exactly the thing that she shouldn’t do that she wanted to.

Going in there could jeopardize the entire mission, but what if there was something important there? The door said  _ RESTRICTED  _ in large bolded letters, after all. 

Hating herself, she pushed open the door a bit further, and what she saw took her breath away.

It was like being on another world (or maybe it was): The purplish haze surrounded the black cliff she was on. The sky was cloudless, and grey, and as she looked down the saw water hundreds of feet below.

She reached out for the railing, or where it had been in the hallway, and her hand closed around the bar, but she couldn’t see it. It was like she had stepped into another dimension, or an altered reality.

She turned around. There was sea mist that fiercely blew at her hair, but she didn’t know if it was real because she hadn’t felt the slightest breeze in the hallway.

“So you’ve found it, have you?” asked a sickeningly familiar voice.

Behind her was Crimson. Lila gulped. On the edge of a cliff was not a place she wanted to be with this lady. 

“I thought…” she started, remembering the way the gun had felt in her hands and the satisfaction of a shot at Crimson. 

“Yes, that was a well placed bullet,” Crimson said conversationally. “I’m going to have to take credit for teaching you how to do that. The 13th hub works fast, haven’t you noticed?”

She had. It had been two days now since Crimson had shot her, and today she didn’t feel like it had ever existed.

“Why are you here?” she asked, trying to buy herself some time.

“I belong here just as you do,” she said. 

“I don’t belong here!” Lila said, forgetting all pretense. “Where are we?”

“We are on the planet Vormir. Or are we?”

“How?” she asked.

“Artificial reality, my dear,” said Crimson, her red lips splitting in a smile. “ _ It  _ may not be real. But what happens here is.”

“Couldn’t have said it better,” replied another voice from behind Crimson.

There was a moment when time froze, like that feeling you get in between making two decisions. An uncomfortable sort of feeling. 

This was not that.

Before Lila could scream, a flash of silver passed through her vision and then Crimson was falling off the cliff, fast, and plummeting towards the bottom. There was a sickening crunching sound as her body, already dead, hit the bottom of the deep abyss.

“Fitting, isn’t it?” said the voice again. Lila looked behind her. One of Ultron’s Legion stood behind her.

“The Crimson Death’s dead body lying in a pool of blood just as vividly red as her name.”

It was true. Crimson’s body was sprawled out on the rocky base, limbs splayed unnaturally and mutilated in grotesque places. Her face was still the same, except the huge pool of shimmering red blood around her head slowly enveloping the rest of her body. She imagined what the back would be: bone smashed, neck snapped clean, and tried to resist the strong and sudden urge to vomit over the side of the cliff.

“How unfortunate. They all think that they know everything, and are too powerful for the silly games of death. No, they are merely the pawns on the chessboard, never realizing there is a greater force determining their movements.”

Lila said nothing, still staring at the pool of ever-growing blood.

“Why her?” she asked finally. “What did she do?”

“She was in the way.” came her reply. “Using you too much. She spent a lot of time in The Deep, you know. I believe that she wanted the reality stone for herself. She developed a strange, unnatural desire for it. I do not know if it ever possessed her, but I do not believe so. We would have known when she died.”

Lila had no response to this.

And then it was like the reality changed.

She was floating in the stars, high above, wispy tendrils of color surrounding her, enveloping her, like ripples. And the ripples spread, slowly, the color leaching and turning only to silver-blue and orange-gold.

She opened her fist. An orange stone sat in it. She was in the water below the cliff, or the not-cliff, and she had the stone.

She had the stone.

“Why me?” she whispered. “I didn’t push her off.”

“Ah,” said the robot behind her. “But you did.”

“I...what?”

“You had killed her from the moment she, under our orders, kidnapped you. You had everything that she never did, and that is why she hated you with all her power. I believe someone once told you that arrows were meant to fly.”

Lila turned the stone over in her hands. The soft orange glow filled her with a strange, empty sort of warmth.

“Or perhaps this was Red Skull’s game from the beginning. Maybe he knew that there was a loophole to his freedom, and he wanted us to have this world but never the life that resides deep within it. Perhaps he simply wanted us to kill our loved ones, when anyone would do.”

“Who?”

The robot smiled, or as much as you could with a face of metal.

“He was the first leader of H.Y.D.R.A. before he turned himself into a monster. How do you think we got this?” it said, gesturing loosely around. “After Thanos had retrieved the stone, our programming sent five of the Legion to Vormir. Red Skull told us the stone had been taken. He was the guardian. We offered him a bargain.”

“A soul for a soul,” she breathed. “Just like this.”

“Yes. Catching on fast, are you? We freed him, and he in turn, let us recreate this. Of course, he’ll have to go back if the stone is ever returned, but that won’t happen. And now, I’m going to need that,” it said, holding out a hand for the stone.

Lila took a step back, clutching the soul stone tighter. That would make it their third if they got it.

It took a step forward, and she started running, her thoughts clearing. She needed to press that button. But that would mean Coulson and Pepper would come running, and they’d be in danger, too.

She aborted that plan and dashed through the shallow water towards shore, aided by the 13th hub’s added speed. The closer she ran into the distance, the horizon stayed in the same place, luring her into a never-ending sea, so she ran towards Crimson’s body instead, heels kicking up droplets of water that found their way into her hair and eyes.

The water started turning a strange, murky red, and she waded into Crimson’s pool of scarlet. On the rocks now, she slipped on a stray patch of sticky blood, and her hand sliced open on one of the wickedly jagged rocks.

_ This may not be real, but what happens here is. _

She looked back, seeing her pursuer closing in, and was about to see if there was any way she could scale the cliff when the water stirred.

“What did you do?” she asked, backing up against the cliff wall.

“They’re drawn by blood,” explained the robot calmly. “They were really only for Morag, to retrieve the power stone, but I suppose they live on other planets, too.”

And out of the water came...lizards?

“We had the idea after we looked into Nebula’s mind. They really are good microphones. I’m personally hoping our dear friend Starlord will pick one up again, just so I can see it blow up in his face.”

“Nebula...who...what...are you possessing them or something?” she asked confusedly, as most of her mind was trying to find her body some footholds.

“The mind stone’s reach extends far, yes, but I would like to make a deal with you. Theatricals aren’t in my programming.”

Lila grabbed a rock jutting out and pulled herself up, repeating the process until she found herself unable to find another foothold. She was dangling from her fingers now, which wasn’t easy considering they were smeared with both her and Crimson’s blood, and she was holding the stone.

The robot flew up next to her, flames exploding in a controlled sort of way like rockets from its feet.

“If you won’t give it, we’ll just have to take it.”

It grabbed her and they burst off, landing on the cliff edge once more. 

“But I think you’ll find that you will. We have a bargain.”

They exited the room, and entered one on the floor below.

Pepper and Coulson were standing in a circle of the Legion, surrounded, but guns out. 

It dragged her forwards by the neck, and dumped her on the floor. A purple ring of bruises started to glow around her neck, aching irritatingly.

“Give us the stone, and we won’t kill them.” 

“You will anyways!” she said, trying to buy time as she panicked. 

“Not enough? Well, I’m sure something will convince you.” It turned its head towards the far door.

“Bring her in.  
The door swung open and in came Morgan, being dragged by two more of the Legion, a knife at her throat. 

_ Morgan?  _ But how could Jarvis have failed?

“Morgan!” Pepper cried, guns still trained on the Legion surrounding them. “Let her go or I will kill all of you.”

“Ah, but we  _ can’t  _ die, you see, because we are a program. There is always the chance for more. So, let me change the bargain a bit: Her life for two stones? Or otherwise, we can always kill her and just take the stones. It’s your choice.”

Lila shot a desperate glance at Pepper, who was seeming to be having some sort of eye-to-eye communication with Coulson.

“Take them,” she breathed finally.

“The stones first, or it’s not a bargain.”

“Take me.”

Lila looked over, frozen, at Coulson, who had spoken it. 

“I know the formula. I memorized it. The others have never seen it.”

“Coulson-”

His face turned white as the member of the Legion she’d faced on the cliffside stepped forward. Occasionally, flashes of moving color appeared in the air, and Coulson’s look was distant, like he was viewing his own memories and watching them pass by. There was even a moment when she felt a slight brushstroke in her own mind, swift, and cool. They probably wanted to be sure that she didn’t have it.

Finally, the AI seemed satisfied.

“The mind stone really is quite helpful. The formula has already been uploaded into the heads of all the Legion. Now, the girl. You see, we  _ will  _ let her live. But I do think we’ll keep her here.”

Pepper made a move, but Coulson held out his hand warningly. 

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” she ground out.

“You should be more careful what you wish for. Now, the soul stone, and she can go free.”

Everyone’s head turned to Lila. That’s when she had a thought.   
Morgan and Cassie had been on the ship together. If Morgan was here, where was Cassie?

She looked up at the walkway above them, where Cassie stood rooted to the spot, but invisible to those who weren't looking for her due to her short stature.

Lila motioned upwards discreetly for her to wait. Cassie held up a grenade. Lila had no idea how she had gotten that, but it was all the better for them.

“Morgan first,” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt. 

“The stone.”

“Morgan!”

The robot took a step towards her.

“Now!” she shouted.

Cassie dropped the grenade from above, and the room filled with dark, heavy smoke, the kind that completely obscures your vision and chokes up your lungs.

She stumbled forward, free from her captor’s grip, and ran towards where Pepper and Coulson had last been standing.

“Pepper!” she called. 

“I’m here, behind you! Get Morgan, Coulson’s got Cassie!”

A few blind shots rang out, but they all hit the wall behind them except for one that rebounded off some metallic thing and rocketed towards Lila, who ducked. 

She ran forward, and into something hard. It tossed her like a rag doll across the blackened room. A robot, then.

The stone slid from her grasp as she collided with the wall. The room went black for a moment, then swam lazily and hazily into view again. Her head rang, and the room spun, but she staggered forward in an attempt to retrieve the stone.

A firm hand grabbed her and pulled her briskly across the room, and out the door once more.

“We got her. It’s fine now,” the voice belonging to the hand said. It was Pepper. “Morgan’s safe.”

“I dropped the stone,” she whispered.

A response came, but she didn’t hear it as the black around her vision enveloped her like a soft caress.


	16. Pending Dangers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if the chapters are short today...I promise you, there will be more action, I just need to write in a little break in the scenery!

Her first thought upon awakening was  _ ugh, not again. _

She opened her eyes and found that she was almost seeing double. A blond ponytail swished twice in front of her as an incessant pounding resurfaced.

She moaned and curled back up, trying to fall asleep.

“Lila.”

That hair was bobbing softly now, like it was underwater.

“Lila.”

A satisfying spin was put on every slight movement, but it soon faded and just became no more than a slight nagging sensation at the back of her mind, keeping its own uncomfortable nuisances to itself. 

“Where are we?” she asked, staying tightly curled. 

“On the plane. Coulson’s here, and we have Cassie and Morgan.”

One thought undulated past, and her mind reached for it, taking hold. This was one of the only firm ones she’d had since waking up.

“Pepper. I-I lost it. They have five stones now, don’t they.”

“Don’t stress yourself. We got Morgan and Cassie and you out safely, and that’s all that matters.”

The words she spoke were comforting, but her tone said otherwise. H.Y.D.R.A. only needed one more stone.

“Pepper-” she stopped, realizing she really didn’t know what to say. Instead, she asked “Where’s the others?”

“In the other room,” said Pepper. “I wouldn’t bother going there if I were you, though. Actually, I don’t think I’m even supposed to let you out of bed. That robot practically threw you twenty meters into a concrete wall. I daresay you probably have a mild concussion, even with the 13th hub.”

Lila just squashed herself farther into the corner.

_ Don’t be a wimp,  _ she told herself.  _ This is your fault.  _ You  _ dragged Pepper and Morgan and Cassie into this. _

She felt that same sick feeling she had felt when sort of considering her own sucicide. 

_ Don’t think like that, It will only bring you more trouble to herself. _

Then she remembered something. “Pepper...while they looked in Coulson’s mind, I swear I felt it in my head too. It was swift, and clean and...oh.”

“What is it?”

“I should have guessed,” she moaned. “It’s The Blade.”

“The what?”

“It’s sort of a Stark tech they adapted to read memories. I think...Pepper, I think they’re going to use Sashya.”

“Okay. Boy, am I going to have a long talk with Tony about where to keep his stuff. Who’s Sashya?”

Lila twisted uncomfortably. “She was with me in the Red Room.” 

Pepper could tell that there was probably more to the story, but she didn’t say anything. She was right. There was more, that strange tug whenever she thought of Sashya. 

“Pepper...they’re going to use her. I don’t know how, but they will.”

“Rest now, Lila. Save your energy. You’re going to need it.” she could tell Pepper’s mind was whirring, even as she herself drifted slowly off to sleep.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


In her dream, the world twisted.

A voice caught her, and altered her, and showed her everything.

It showed her Sashya.

_ She is safe,  _ it said.  _ For now. Retrieve the last stone, and she will live. We have looked in your mind, and we know that she is more than an acquaintance. _

_ You’re not real,  _ her dream self responded, mind clear for once.  _ I am not going to give in just yet to your temptations. _

_ But you  _ will, came her reply.  _ She is something you want, and you can have her. She has a terrible fate in store. Terrible, but great. And we will use her to our advantage. She will not need to meet the fate of a collision of worlds, a fate too great for a mortal.  _

_ You’ll kill her anyway,  _ she replied, but less sure.

_ Will we? _

And then

_ I know you will come. _

_ Heroes, they always do. _

_ And they all meet a sticky end. _

  
  
  
  
  
  


When she awoke again, Agent Coulson was sitting down at a table with Pepper.

“...you can’t help it, this is escalating too fast.”

“Where are we supposed to get reinforcements? The Avengers have bigger problems than ours, it probably is far less dangerous, too.”

“You worked with Nick Fury! Isn’t there anyone you can find to help us out a bit?”

“Just because I worked with Fury doesn’t mean I have the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. up my sleeve! There  _ is  _ no S.H.I.E.L.D. left to work with!”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody!”

Both of them seemed to realize Lila was listening to them at the same time and both their faces immediately turned into masks.

“It’s not like my head is vibrating or anything, I can still comprehend you,” she said.

“Actually, that’s sort of the idea of a concussion.” Coulson replied, not able to help himself. 

“It’s gone now,” protested Lila. “Magical scientific manipulation, remember?”

Pepper shot Coulson a dirty look.

“They sent you a message or something, didn’t they?” she asked. “H.Y.D.R.A.. A threat.”

Pepper and Coulsoun shared a glance. Lila felt a small thrill. She was right. Was this the supernatural, or was it through The Blade? “Yes, actually,” said Coulson. “Who’s Sashya?”

Pepper and her shared a wordless look.

“Like in my dream,” she said under her breath.

“What dream?” asked Pepper sharply.

“It’s nothing.”

“Tell me.”

So Lila recounted how, like she had suspected, they were using Sashya as leverage over them. Retrieve the power stone, and she lives.

“Where do you even get an infinity stone?”

“I don’t know, but I might have an idea. Phil, do you know if S.H.I.E.L.D. ever experimented with cloning devices?”

Coulson tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. 

“As a matter of fact, they were starting to look into that before Loki came and, you know, nearly decimated New York.”

“Wait. We’re taking their bait?” Lila asked.

Pepper shot her a grim expression. “This is the problem. Tony would just let her die to save the stone, but I can’t do that. They’ll just find some other way of making all the stones. And I know this isn’t the answer you, or any hero would want to hear, but if I were given the choice to lose an infinity stone or to save your life, I’d choose you any day.”

That was quite heartwarming, a slight relief for Lila, who felt a burst of compassion at being compared to a hero. 

Another thought quickly replaced the first, though: But what if they failed? And what would happen when H.Y.D.R.A. had all the stones? There were too many variables that could be interchanged in so many ways, each possibility worse than the last.

“What now?” she asked.

“Well, we just go wherever the first lead is,” said Pepper. 

Coulson frowned slightly. Lila could tell he wasn’t the biggest fan of this idea. She wouldn’t be either, but Sashya was sort of like a friend.

Sort of.

She felt a stab of guilt of trying to put Sashya and the girls at the Red Room behind her so quickly. A tiny part of her still was convinced if she paid it little attention it might all disappear like a bad dream.

“So. I was thinking about the cloning thing.” continued Pepper. 

“You’re not actually considering that?” asked Coulson. “Where would you even get a holographic projection of the power stone?”

“We’re Starks,” Pepper said, a hint of pride in her voice. “Why would we  _ not  _ have a stored holograph of the infinity stones?”

Pepper was a lot more prepared for saving the world than she ever would be.

Coulson just shrugged. “Okay, but they were trying that one out in the new Avengers headquarters. I think they had it in Stark Towers for a while, but I think Happy relocated that stuff.”

“Hang on.” Pepper frowned. “The plane that was carrying all that stuff crashed.”

“What?” said both Lila and Coulson. “When?”

Coulson actually seemed to know about this plane while Lila was completely uninformed and eager to soak up information.

“Vulture,” she said. “I met May Parker once, and she was wondering where the kid was so late at night. I left, and she called me the day after, explaining why her fifteen year old was covered in cobwebs.”

“Ah,” said Coulson. “Spiderman. I heard rumors.”

“Rumors, all right,” Pepper fumed. “No, I think Tony  _ forgot  _ to mention he was mentoring some kid to me.”

“But is the stuff even there?” Lila asked. “Did Happy get any of the stuff out?”

“I don’t know, he only told me that he had only one box that he salvaged before leaving it. So much for our head of security.”

“It’s better than Jarvis being your head of security.”

“Good point.”

“So,” said Lila, trying to get to the point, “Now where would that box be?”

“The Avengers headquarters,” said Pepper. “I guess we have to get past some of my own security.”

Coulson grinned. “Vacation time, everyone.”


	17. The Power Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is like a tiny one shot...but whatever!

The plane soared over empty, grassy fields rimmed with forest. The scenery reminded Lila of home. It hadn’t been that long since she left, but it felt long anyways.

“Where is it?” she asked. “We’ve been flying over this area for an hour.”

“Should be here somewhere,” said Coulson. “I just haven’t been to it yet.” 

“Pepper,” said Lila, “Isn’t there some...some sort of cloaking you’d use to hide something like that?”

“Probably,” she said. “I just haven’t asked Jarvis yet. J.A.R.V.I.S!”

“I’m reprogramming to detect heat and metal with the sonar. Don’t worry.” Jarvis said.

A few minutes later, they touched down in a grassy field. The Avengers headquarters, in all it’s silver glory, shone above them. 

“That looks like a garage,” Cassie commented. “Or the back, at least.”

They had consented to bring Cassie and Morgan along, because this was (relatively) safer than their other missions. 

“Jarvis. Deactivate security systems.”

“On it.” said Jarvis.

The back slid open, and there was an intake of breath from Coulson.

Rows and rows of metal boxes were stacked feet high. There were glass panes in the back, and she could see into what was kind of a sitting room, and behind that another room. She took a sharp intake of breath. Inside, she could see Aunt Nat sitting at a desk with Mr. Rogers, answering holographic video calls from people she didn’t recognize.

So close, but just out of reach. Family. The familiar. Everything she wanted back. But of course, she had Pepper, and interfering just wasn’t an option.

Pepper bit her lip. “Stay away from there, okay? They need to do what they need to do.” She swore she saw something white pass between Coulson and Pepper’s hands, and they both reached to their pockets.

Lila nodded. “Which box would it be in?”

“It should have the S.H.I.E.L.D logo on one side.”

“That’s half the boxes here,” she pointed out.

“Okay, what else?” prompted Pepper.

“It should say ‘restricted’,” said Coulson unhelpfully.

“That’s stupid,” said Cassie. “Then of course everyone will want to open it.”

“You know, I’m not sure why we do that. Our logo is pretty much printed everywhere. It really doesn’t make sense.”

They moved through the rows of boxes, picking out the RESTRICTED ones with S.H.I.E.L.D. Soon, there was a pile of about twenty boxes.

“That helped,” said Pepper. Morgan looked up at her innocently. 

“Carry me?” she asked.

“Not now,” said Pepper. “We have some work to do. Any more ideas?”

“Have you tried using E.D.I.T.H. yet?” Lila asked. “It would save a whole lot of work.”

Pepper fished E.D.I.T.H. out of her pocket. “E.D.I.T.H. Scan boxes for cloning devices.”

“Scanning.” said E.D.I.T.H. “Device located in box 2683.”

Coulson pulled out one of the boxes and opened it. Inside was an obsidian black platform with a slot in the center.

“So do we just…” inquired Cassie.

“E.D.I.T.H. Project power stone.” intoned Pepper.

“Ooh.” said Morgan, at the same time E.D.I.T.H. said “Projecting.”

A holographic model of the power stone appeared on the platform, surrounded by a ton of holographic numbers and equations that Lila couldn’t nearly have begun to understand.

The holographic image doubled, and thin strands raced across the image on the left, slowly turning the entire projection purple, until it wasn’t a projection anymore. It dropped, and Pepper caught it.

“Don’t touch it!” said Coulson.

“It’s fine. I don’t think a cloned version could possibly retain exactly the same properties as the real one. Don’t worry,” she said, tossing it rapidly, “I won’t hold it for more than a second.”

Morgan and Cassie dragged up a smaller metallic box that they placed the stone inside.

“Are you sure about this?” Lila asked hesitantly. Pepper met her eyes, and held firm.

“I’m not going to let anyone else go through what you had to, even if it means doing this. That’s what the Avengers are for, right?”’

Coulson gave a slight nod. Even he agreed. 

“Let’s go.” Lila said.

“Lila,” said Pepper. “I don’t know who Sashya is, or who she is to you, but she’ll be fine. I promise.”

“You do?” she said, not understanding why it mattered so much to her.

Pepper squeezed her hand.    
“Now can you carry me?” asked Morgan.

Sighing, Pepper lifted Morgan up and spun her around in the air once, Morgan screaming in delight.

“We’re going to leave you on the plane for this next bit, okay? Cassie will stay with you.”

Morgan pouted, but accepted, as they headed back towards the plane, making it her moral duty to tread on each and every wildflower that she saw in her path.

  
  


“Where exactly are we going now?” asked Lila as the plane soared over densely packed forests of cedar, oak, and pine. 

The sky had dimmed to a deep blue, and hints of an orangey-pink tinge around the horizon were the only signs that the sun had ever lingered there.

“Back to the Deep,” said Coulson grimly.

“Oh boy,” said Lila. “Will they have blocked off that exit we used before?”

“Probably,” said Coulson, “But we can go in through the front this time. We have a bargaining tool.”

“Hopefully.” said Pepper. “Here goes nothing.”

They stepped out of the plane into the shadowy forest towards the gleaming silver doors, ready to risk their lives for another bargain.

  
  



	18. Unveiling Infinity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Back to the deep!

At the doors was a sort of voice sensor, similar to the one Jarvis had deactivated earlier. Pepper hesitated, then said “Pepper Potts. Here to...return the power stone.”

“Better to be honest,” she said to them.

“Return?” said Lila. “It wasn’t theirs in the first place!”

“True, but if we said  _ here to give you a gift,  _ well, that wouldn’t really work either. And besides, it’s better than  _ here we are to return what is rightfully yours. _ ”

Lila and Coulson gave her two identical expressions of perfectly portrayed skepticism. 

“What?” she said. “I can’t say that I’m here to bargain.”

“That you are not.”

All three of them whipped around to see the heavy steel doors retreating upward and a H.Y.D.R.A. personnel staring at them.

“Follow me.” he said briskly.

Pepper and Coulson exchanged a look that read  _ better be careful  _ quite plainly.

“It’s cold in here,” said Lila as she followed behind Pepper and Agent Coulson as they made their way up a few flights of stairs in pursuit of H.Y.D.R.A. dude. Each step they took made an uncomfortable ringing. It was too quiet here.

She recognized the gray concrete and steel walls, and the walkways looping around the top of the room who knew how many floors above. Gods, she hoped that the weird Vormir room had been closed off now that they had the soul stone. That was another experience to add to her list of ‘never doing that again.’

She shivered. Had it always been this cold, or was it just today? She hadn’t really paid much attention last time, with the whole I’m on a different planet thing and the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

“You can have my jacket,” said Pepper, handing it over.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

They returned to the room where Lila had found Coulson and Pepper surrounded a few days ago. She made a mental note to stay far away from the walls.

Five stones were each placed on a pedestal in the center of the room. H.Y.D.R.A. guards and Legion alike stood in the corners of the room, guarding.

Or waiting.

“You have it, then. Time to unveil infinity.” one of the Legion spoke. It was a statement, not a question.

Pepper nodded, evidently trying to hold it together, and held out the box for them to see.

“Where’s Sashya.” Lila challenged, making it a statement, not a question. 

“Oh, we have her. Would you like to see?”

A panel on the side of the room opened, revealing a small space with horizontal blue lines in the front, like bars. Probably electric, or something that would prevent escape. Inside sat Sashya, unchained. She looked uncomfortable, but not harmed on the whole.

“There you have it. We haven’t harmed her, as we need her to stay loyal to us. We won’t kill her. So hand it over.”

Lila looked uneasily at Pepper and Coulson. This was too easy. What had they said?

_ We haven’t harmed her, as we need her to stay loyal to us. We won’t kill her. _

Hadn’t that been their initial promise all along? She thought back to that dream.

_ Retrieve the last stone, and she will live. She is something you want, and you can have her. She has a terrible fate in store. Terrible, but great. And we will use her to our advantage. She will not need to meet the fate of a collision of worlds, a fate too great for a mortal.  _

She had no idea what the last bit meant, but how thick was she? Of course they’d let her live. For now. They had something in store for her, and they’d counted on Lila to bring the last stone. That was her fatal weakness, she supposed. Not knowing when a cause was lost. She had played directly into H.Y.D.R.A.’s-no,  _ Ultron’s  _ plan. 

Pepper pulled off the lid.

“It’s yours,” she said.

She watched as Sashya seemed to relax in her cell, and one of H.Y.D.R.A. 's members reached out for the stone to place it on the last empty pedestal. 

A few things happened all at once, seemingly in slow motion, as if someone had turned reality down into a snail’s point of view: Pepper’s finger’s connected with the stone, she heard a muffled cry which may have been her own, and rays of purple light exploded outward from Pepper, spiraling and twisting through the air. Lila was knocked back into another pedestal, where she seized the stone on top and let the pedestal fall and smash behind her.

A few H.Y.D.R.A. guards attempted to get to Pepper, but it was like she had somehow merged with the stone: her eyes had turned into a glowing violet and a huge, miniature supernova-like blast of purple shot out of her hand when she raised it, sending the guards flying back into the very painful wall behind them before they dissolved.

Coulson ran to free Sashya as the Legion, in unison, held out their palms and bluish light emitted like a beam to match Pepper’s. Her violet eyes that seemed to emit power as she sent the swirling mass from around her to the Legion, watching as they turned to ash.

The sirens went off, and the door burst open with more H.Y.D.R.A. reinforcements. They tried to surround her, but she could fight now. She twisted one’s arm, then flipped him to the ground, kicking, dodging, and occasionally punching her way.

She glanced over to Coulson, who was having much worse luck. He had gotten Sashya out, but they both looked very burnt, and he was attempting to hold off six at once with only a pistol.

She took a nice, flavorful punch in the stomach for her distraction, and using that, vaulted off that guard’s back and slid across the metal table, butterfly-kicking a guard who attempted to get to Sashya.

Sashya looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?”

“I am not going to hurt these people. I want that to be over.”

“It’s not that! They’re H.Y.D.R.A., and they try to control us all. The Legion, too. They started it. It’s not your fault,” she said, jiu-jitsu flipping one just for the point.

“Isn’t it?” said Sashya sadly. “I did their work too, so now I’m trapped.”

“You don’t have to be!” Lila pleaded. “Where will you go when we get out of here?”

“If,” Sashya corrected. “You have more important things to worry about,” said Sashya.

“What?”

“Look.”

Pepper was incinerating guards as fast as she could, but too many more were coming. Lila watched, frozen, as Coulson was blasted backwards into the electric cell by a few of the Legion that Sashya had been in.

“Agent Coulson!” she shouted.

Time froze after that. 

He staggered back against the wall, trapped. Something started ticking in the corner of the cell.

0:10

It was red, numbers flashing. Did all foul things in this world have to be red?

0:09

Pepper must have seen it too, because the violet in her eyes dimmed as she turned to watch.

  
  


0:08

Some H.Y.D.R.A. guards tried to tackle both her and Pepper, but her ray of violet incinerated them instantaneously. Pepper radiated power now. Power was fueled by fear, and fear was something there was an abundance of here.

0:07

The electric blue bars sealed themselves with a thick glass you could see sparking with blue.

0:06

Coulson looked desperately around for something,  _ anything  _ to save them this time. He knew what was going to happen. He raised his head in a last stand of defiance.

0:05

Sashya touched her arm.

Pepper opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Instead, she raised her arms in a silent scream and a wave so powerful you could feel the ground quake burn all the remaining H.Y.D.R.A. and Ultron’s Steel Corps all at once. 

0:04

Lila watched as an ember floated past the blue wall of electricity separating them. She reached into her pocket, past the thing she’d grabbed off a pedestal and pulled out a pill. She crushed it in her fingers.

0:03

This is what Pepper and Coulson had exchanged.

0:02

Pepper shouted, “Get back!” but it sounded muffled, like she was swimming underwater. 

They watched as Coulson reached into his pocket and pulled out a cyanide pill identical to the one she’d just found.

0:01

Coulson’s eyes went from Sashya to Pepper and finally locked onto her own as he put the pill between his teeth, bit down, and the room exploded.

Lila could have sworn for a moment that, in the light of the sudden fire, she could see the stars.

  
  
  
  



End file.
